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9j. 








THE BOYS’ BOOK OF 
CANOEING AND SAILING 









































♦ 




























































































































































































































































































































A SAILING SKIPJACK RACE, ROUNDING THE MARK 

Courtesy “Rudder” 






THE BOYS’ BOOK OF 
CANOEING AND 
SAILING . 


BUILDING AND RIGGING SAILCRAFT, CANOE 
HANDLING AND MOTOR BOAT 
MANAGEMENT 


^ BY 

WARREN H. MILLER v 

Author or "The Boys’ Book of Hunting and Fishing, «• 
"Camp Craft,” etc., etc. 



NEW YORK 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



COPYRIGHT, 1917 , 

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


sj 



COPYRIGHT, 1911 , BY THE FIELD AND STREAM PUB. CO. 


COPYRIGHT, 1911 , BY OUTING PUBLISHING CO. 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



A 4 5 7 431 


U 


I 









PREFACE 


Boys, this preface you’ll have to read, for there 
is no use digging into the book until I’ve had a 
word with you about nautical terms. Some writ¬ 
ers try to put a book in “plain English” that any 
one can understand, but the traditions of the Sea 
are so strong that no sailor has either time or pa¬ 
tience to translate nautical terms into descriptive 
ordinary words. It simply cannot be done; there 
isn’t time in giving orders, for one thing; and, 
for another, if a man or boy presumes to take 
his place on board a yacht and does not even know 
the terms by which the rig of a ship is named he 
is too lazy to make much of a sailor. On no one 
thing are you so quickly judged aboard ship as by 
your use of the right nautical names for every¬ 
thing on her, and this book simply bristles with 
words and expressions that are good sailorman 
English, the very words that you yourself will use 
when you become a practical yachtsman. Most of 
them you can pick up in the text, if you watch 
sharp and catch on quickly as to just how these 
things are said, but how to get a fair working 


VI 


PREFACE 


knowledge of the names of things nautical into a 
boy’s head has caused me some thought. There is 
no use putting a sort of dictionary in the back of 
the book, for you w r ould not take the trouble to 
dig back there, nor remember it long if you did. 
But, when the name of a thing is on a picture, 
it is easy for it to stick in your memory, and you 
get it right far easier than with any amount of 
description, and so, opposite this page, I have 
drawn a boy’s yacht with every cranny and corner 
of her labelled with its right nautical term. Study 
it now, and refer back to it every time you run 
across a word in the book that you aren’t sure of. 
You will get to know a sail boat in her right terms 
almost as quickly as we boys, who were taught 
with a rope’s end on real yachts, and had sail 
boats of our own. And then, when you have a 
craft of your own you will not be talking about 
her like a landlubber to the first yachtsman you 
meet! 

Once a sailorman, always a sailorman. I be¬ 
gan with the salt sea at the age of nine; was 
“Cap’n” of my first sailing yacht at the age of 
eleven; graduated up from there through duck- 
boat, dory, catboat and small sloop; went into the 
Naval Reserve on the old sailing sloop-of-war 
Portsmouth as a foretopman at the age of twenty, 



NAUTICAL NAMES ABOUT A BOAT 


fr** Ut.nl 





















































































































































































































PREFACE 


Vll 


and was commissioned an Ensign in the U. S. 
Navy at the age of twenty-two. I served all 
through the Spanish War, and to this day hold an 
intense interest in canoeing, yachting and naval 
matters. I built and owned a 35-ft. power cruiser; 
own to-day three canoes, two sail boats and a 
motor boat, and have the designs made for a 54-ft. 
ocean-going auxiliary ketch that we expect to 
build soon, and that will keep the seas in all weath¬ 
ers and sail anywhere. The point is this: If a boy 
once starts in extreme youth with a small boat he 
will never lose his interest, and this book is for 
boys, youths and “old boys” who have been too 
busy to grow old; it grows up from the first chap¬ 
ter to the last, so that you will find the latter chap¬ 
ters on the care and outfitting of motor boats and 
power cruisers quite as adaptable to the use of 
youths from seventeen to twenty-five years as the 
earlier chapters on small sail craft are for .juve¬ 
niles from eleven to fifteen years of age. 

And, as I said before, I have used nautical terms 
throughout, with but a line of explanation where 
the text may need it; we are talking of nautical 
matters, and want to become as familiar with the 
dialect of the sea as possible. There is a whole 
lot that did not get into this book at all; naviga¬ 
tion, yacht etiquette, etc., all of which you can 


viii 


PREFACE 


learn quite as well from dozens of handbooks that 
are already extant. But what I have set down in 
these pages will make a fairly able seaman and 
boat carpenter of any boy who loves the salt sea 
and the open waters, and the rest he will pick up 
as he needs. 

Warren H. Miller, 

Interlaken, N. J., December, 1916. 


CONTENTS 


PART ONE: SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Sailing Batteau.17 

II Sail Dory, Duckboat and Skiff ... 41 

III Catboats and Knockabouts .... 63 

IV Boat Building for Boys. 80 


PART TWO: CANOEING AND CRUISING 


I How to Rig and Handle an Open Canoe 119 

II Canoe Cruising for Boys.138 

III How to Build a Decked Canvas Cruising 

Canoe. 160 

IV Canoe Fittings.177 


PART THREE: MOTOR BOAT MANAGEMENT 


AND CONSTRUCTION 

I Choosing Your Motor Boat .... 189 

II Motor Boat Fittings.206 

III Cabin and Interior Furnishings . . 226 

IV Yacht Plumbing. 241 

V All About Your Engine .253 


IX 











X 


CONTENTS 


VI Engine Troubles. 266 

VII The Galley of the Power Cruiser . . 286 

VIII Going into Commission.303 

IX Hauling Out for the Winter . . . 318 

X Building a Power Cruiser from Knock¬ 
down Frames.331 




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


A Sailing Skipjack Race. Frontispiece'^' 

PACK 

Nautical Names About a Boat.vi 

The Margaret as Just Plain Rowboat.18 

Keel Board for 15-ft. Sailing Batteau .... 22 

Under Full Sail.22 ' 

Whistling for a Breeze.28 

Sailing Batteau with Bow and Stem Deck and 

Washboards.32 ^ 

Cutting the Mainsail.32 

The 13-ft. L. W. L. Sailing Batteau Margaret . . 36*^ 

Sail and Deck Plans of the 17-ft. Whitehall Boat 

W.B .42 ^ 

The Bamegat Duck Boat.48 

The 17-ft. Club Sailing Dory Bee .56 ^ 

18-ft. Decked Racing Dories.58 

A 16-ft. Lap Strake Catboat for Boys 64 

Frame Plan and Deck Plan of 16-ft. Lap Strake 

Catboat.66 

A Knockabout Rig for a 22-ft. Decked Skill ... 68 

The Popular 15-Rater Knockabout.70 ^ 

Sail Plan of a 26-ft. 0. A. Knockabout . . . . 70 ^ 

Frame and Body Plans of a Small Knockabout . . 72 ^ 

The Annisquam 16-ft. Catboat.76 













ILLUSTRATIONS 


xii 

PAGE 

A 16-ft. Racing Catboat.78 ^ 

Framing Plans and Deck Plan of 16-ft. Catboat . 80' 

Knots and Bends Used in Seamanship . . . . 88 

Boat Construction Details.92 x 

Sheer Plan and Body Plan of 19-ft. Sail Dory . . 108 

Framing Designs for a 19-ft. Sail Dory .... 110 ^ 

Correct Beginning of Stroke.120^ 

Correct Finish of Stroke.120 

Latteen Rig for Open Canvas Canoe.126 

41 Shoving’ ’ the Water Out.126^ 

To Swing Canoe Overhead.128 ' 

Paddles Lashed in Position.128 ' 

Carrying Single.128 

Frame Plan and Sail Plan Waterat IV ... 13^ 

Off for a Long Lake and Portage Cruise .... 136^ 

River Canoe Cruising.136- 

Getting Breakfast in the Canoe Tarp Camp . . . 140 ^ 

Dan Beard or Camp-Fire Tent.140 -' 

The Forester Tent.144 

The Perfect Shelter Tent.144 ^ 

The Canoe Tarp Camp ..152 

In Camp in a Cruising Decked Canoe.152 

The Side-Opening Grub Bag.156 

Ready to go Overboard Again.156 

The Varmint Under Full Sail.158 

The Waterat IV with Sails and Cockpit Tent . . 158 

Details of Stem and Stern Construction Waterat IV 162 
Deck Framing of the Waterat IV .164 

















ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 

PAGE 

After Stretching Canvas.164 

Body View *“.164 

Ribbands of the Water at IV .164 

Body Plan and Framing, Waterat IV .... 168 

Home-Made Lee Boards.168 

Rounding the Mark.174 ^ 

The Varmint Under an Ash Breeze.174 

Waterat IV with Her Canvas On.180 

The Way An Indian Builds a Birch Bark Canoe . 180 
A Husky Launch for Bays or Large Lakes . . .190 

The Hunting Cabin Launch.190 

A Deep-Sea Motor Cruiser.190 

The Author’s Deep-Sea Cruiser Go-Sum .... 196 

The Author’s Lake Launch Adelaide .196 

Norman V Stern Extension Trunk Cabin Cruiser . 200 
Some Fittings the Marine Law Requires .... 208 " 

A Good Design of Yacht Compass.208 

The Viking Type of Anchor Windlass .... 208 ' 

A Point of Danger.212 

Two-Cylinder Engine with Automatic Oil Feed . . 212 

Lights of Motor Boat and Yawl Under Power . . 216 

Sheer Plan of the Go-Sum .216 

Open 25-ft. Launch with Hunting Cabin Added . 224 
Cabin and Deck Section of the Go-Sum .... 224 
Bending the Plank for the Hunting Cabin . . . 224 

Cabin Plan and Elevation of the Go-Sum . . . 230^ 

Cabin Plan of a Large Ocean-Going Cruiser . . . 234 

Some Yacht Plumbing Fittings.242 
















XIV 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

Elevation of Galley and Toilet Room of the Go-Sum 246 
Details of Cabin Construction on the Go-Sum . . 250 

A Home-Made Force Pump.250 

Electrical Connections for Jump-Spark Ignition . 250 

Some Well-Known Carburetors.256 

Crank Piston and Engine Bed.262 

A Four-Horse Gray 2-Cycle.262 

Compression in 2-Cycle Engine.278 

3 y 2 H. P. Ferro 2-Cycle Engine.278 

Galley and Toilet Room Plan of the Go-Sum . . 288 

Can, Cork and Barrel Buoys.306 

Anchor Bitt and Capstan, Combined.306 

Mushroom Mooring Anchor.306 

Mooring Tackle.306 

Overboard with a Pair of Shears.320 

Cradle and Ways for Hauling Out.320 

Details of Hauling-Out Ways.324 

The First Day’s Work on the Go-Sum .... 332 

Finishing the Planking.332 

Planking the Go-Sum .336 














PART ONE: SAILING AND BOAT 
BUILDING 






THE BOYS’ BOOK OF 
CANOEING AND SAILING 


PART ONE: SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 
CHAPTER I 

THE SAILING BATTEAU 

My boyhood town was located on a point of land 
commanding a beautiful blue harbor, an arm of 
the salt sea whence came in daily stately ships, 
standing in from the open roadstead and sweeping 
majestically through the crowds of small sail 
craft, until the grizzled port pilots gave the signal 
to let go anchor, or a puffing tug took charge and 
nosed them into the wharves. That was before 
the U. S. Government dredged out our harbor to 
admit steamers. We were a great sail ship port, 
and our people dealt in commodities that are car¬ 
ried from far distant lands. Later it all gave 
way to huge smoky steamers, laden with prosaic 
iron and coal, and the town became a big manu¬ 
facturing center. 

But we boys were of the sail period of the Re- 
17 


18 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


public; the salt sea was in our breath all day, and 
to be ‘ 4 Cap ’n 9 9 of even a ten-foot sail dory was the 
ambition of every one of us when but six years 
old. By the age of ten we had usually learned 
to swim well and then had the parental per¬ 
mission to own a boat, a sail boat of course, usu¬ 
ally rigged from bowsprit withe to topping lift 
cleat entirely by ourselves. There were plenty of 
fish to be caught, and the bay abounded in wild 
fowl, so that from April to Hauling-out-time in 
November we lived in or on the water. I carry the 
weatherbeaten tan of those days to this hour, and 
no amount of city living can eradicate it! 

We usually began with a flat-bottomed batteau, 
fitted first with a sprit sail and centerboard or 
keel board, and later added the glory of bow deck, 
wash boards and standing rigging; sold the pre¬ 
cious frigate at about the age of fifteen and ac¬ 
quired a round-bottomed sharpie; sold her and 
got a catboat; and, before we were nineteen years 
old, had graduated into the full glory of the rac¬ 
ing 18-rater knockabout. And, as the port had a 
flourishing yacht club, we boys were much in de¬ 
mand for crews, both for racing and cruising. Our 
own particular crowd of five boys were the crew 
of the Ocean Spray, a forty-foot racing sloop, 
whose owner we were only too glad to help at over- 


THE “MARGARET” AS JUST PLAIN ROWBOAT 

The author’s first yacht, 13 ft. over all by 4 ft. 6 in. beam. Adding bow deck 
washboards and centerboard, and putting in a standing sloop rig, she madi 
an able, fast cruiser. 















. 

I. ■ ^ 


. 























THE SAILING BATTEAU 


19 


hauling time, in return for being taken on a cruise 
or two in the summer and allowed to help man 
the yacht in a race. It was a thorough school of 
seamanship—I think every boy of our squad is 
to-day a yacht owner and a naval reservist—and, 
though the motor boat with its general air of land- 
lubberliness seems to have come to stay, the an¬ 
cient sport of sailing is more than holding its own 
in dozens of ports along our sea-coast. 

My first cruiser was a thirteen-foot flat-bot¬ 
tomed batteau, four and a half foot beam, that 
cost me ten dollars just as she lay, a common row¬ 
boat, in Capt. Milham’s slip. I bought her with 
the money of my eleventh Christmas, having con¬ 
vinced Pater the summer before that I could out- 
swim him by challenging him to catch me. We 
were all in swimming off the end of Parker’s pier, 
in about two fathoms of water, and Pater, after a 
vain chase of maybe twenty minutes, nearly got 
me; but I dived under him, and, coming up about 
where his heels were, I made fast and ducked him 
properly! And so that Christmas I received per¬ 
mission to buy my first boat. She was a staunch, 
light batteau; two strakes, cedar planking; an able 
boat in the seaway that ’got up in every easterly 
blow that hit our harbor. I bought her in March 
(it seemed that January and February would 


20 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


never pass), and my first work was to paint tier 
and put her overboard. That meant a can of cop¬ 
per paint for her bottom, a can of white lead for 
her outside, and a can of buff for the inside coat¬ 
ing. These were all quart cans, as two coats each 
were needed, so the bill was $1.95 that stared me 
in the face. A whole lot for a boy of eleven years, 
but I raised it somehow. Her seams lay wide 
open, but the calking was in good shape, so all she 
needed was putty in the seams and then the paint. 
Meanwhile, my chum Eber, who owned a similar 
boat, fifteen feet on the waterline, was happily 
working over his craft nearby in the warm spring 
sunshine, and we combined forces when it came 
to getting the boats overboard. Both promptly 
filled to the water’s edge, as is the way with all 
flat-bottomed craft until the planks swell shut, 
but in a week they were ready to bail out and 
were tight as drums the rest of the summer. 

My first problem was one that troubles many a 
boy,—how to overcome leeway and how to make 
a rig for her. A flat-bottomed boat will skid over 
the water like a leaf if she has no centerboard. 
Leeboards are a clumsy and landlubberly contrap¬ 
tion for a regular boat, though well enough on 
canoes, and a centerboard is rather expensive— 
$2.75 was the best price I could get from the 


THE SAILING BATTEAU 


21 


<< Cap , ns M alongshore* who all did a bit of boat 
carpentry in the winter. My first scheme was a 
hinged centerboard. A piece of twelve-inch-wide 
yellow pine three feet long was secured for ten 
cents from the local wheelwright, and two stout 
galvanized iron hinges with brass pins were 
screwed to it, about eight inches from either end. 
The Margaret was then hauled up on the beach 
and turned on her side, while I attached this cen¬ 
terboard to the keel strip by its hinges. Two stout 
galvanized iron screw eyes were next screwed in 
the lower edge of the board, and from them was 
led out two pieces of flexible copper rope a yard 
long each and costing ten cents a foot. These 
fastened in cleats on opposite sides of the gun¬ 
wale, and the board was then ready for use. 

This board worked rather well. A knot in the 
copper rope told me when she was perpendicular 
to the keel, when both ropes would be belayed on 
their cleats, and she held up well, making little 
leeway. When the boat began to heel down and 
move right along under a smart breeze the ropes 
thrummed as they cut through the water, making 
the whole boat vibrate and of course reducing her 
speed, so she was beaten by nearly every craft in 
the harbor that carried a sail. 

My chum, who was a Florida boy and hated to 


22 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


be beaten, devised a keel board for his boat, pre¬ 
ferring beaching troubles to going slow. He used 
a % x 12-in. yellow pine plank five feet long, cut 
on a long slant at both ends. This was spiked 
securely to a strip of 2 x 4-in. dressed pine run¬ 
ning the full length of the keel board, and this in 
its turn was screwed to the bottom of his batteau. 
A second strip was screwed along the other side of 
his keel board and toenailed to it. The whole 
thing was then copper painted and it made a 
strong job, a deep, permanent keel in fact, and he 
lost no speed from copper ropes thrumming un¬ 
derneath. Of course his troubles came when he 
got into shallow waters or wanted to beach her, 
when that tender keel would strike and had to be 
nursed to prevent it going adrift. The photo 
shows how we made the latter type of board; they 
both cost about the same, $1.00, as we both were 
mighty short on the coin of the realm! 

My first rig was a six-foot by six-foot leg-o’- 
mutton, made of two yards of unbleached muslin, 
the upper corner of which being cut off and added 
on below made the whole sail. It looked huge, in 
the house, and my mother was very much fright¬ 
ened at my carrying all that canvas (!) but on 
the boat it looked like a pocket handkerchief and 
just about gave her steerage way. The mast was 



KEEL BOARD FOR MY BOYHOOD CHUM’S lo-FT. SAIL BATTEAU 



UNDER FULL SAIL. A SKIPJACK SAIL BATTEAU 


Courtesy ‘‘Rudder’’ 
















THE SAILING BATTEAU 


23 


a piece of bamboo picked up on the beach and the 
boom a square strip of yellow pine—can you beat 
it for landlubberliness! However, in a hard blow 
the sail drew well enough to let me learn the sim¬ 
ple arts of tacking, running free and running dead 
before a blow, and it was a much safer rig in the 
last case than one with a peak. This sail got dirty 
and mildewy, and, at the height of its disrepu¬ 
tableness my father and old Cap ’n Tom Little, the 
port pilot, decided that I had progressed far 
enough in sailing to carry a bit more canvas, and 
so I received permission to add a peak. This was 
done, a snowy triangle of unbleached muslin 
added to the filthy leg-o’-mutton, and with that 
and a light sprit spar to hold it out, I scandalized 
the harbor! This in its turn got muddy and dirty 
from numerous shipwrecks and cruises up muddy 
salt-water creeks after snipe, and then I found 
another boom and a longer spar for a sprit and 
so added about two feet more to the leach of the 
sail, making it eight feet along the boom, six feet 
hoist and six feet head. This is about as small 
canvas as I would advise any boy starting out 
with, for a thirteen-foot boat; it gives her good 
speed and she is not set back so much on a tack 
by the tide drift. My sail now resembled Joseph’s 
coat of many colors, but I did not care—wasn’t I 



24 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


the eleven-year-old “Caphi” of a sail boat my¬ 
self! And presently November came around and 
the hunting season was in full blast, so I spent 
more time in the forest with my air rifle than on 
the water in the Margaret, and soon she was 
hauled out and turned over, bottom up, on a pair 
of skids and left to the snows of winter. 

But her skipper was not idle; far from it. My 
twelfth Christmas, word having gone throughout 
the family that I was going to rig the boat and 
put in a centerboard, and that cash would be very 
acceptable in lieu of presents, resulted in about 
$12 in my stocking. I needed a powder rifle and 
a tomahawk very badly but, oh, gee! I did need 
everything imaginable for that boat! A new main 
sail, a jib, spars, centerboard, bow deck, wash¬ 
boards, standing rigging, running rigging, anchor, 
paint—what not! I spent all January planning, 
and resisting the temptation to sell her and add 
the money to my $12 to buy a round-bottomed 
boat, but I wisely stuck to the able little Margaret, 
for the other boat would need complete rigging 
too, and I did not propose to worry through an¬ 
other season half found. During February con¬ 
ferences with Cap hi John Milham, who was very 
busy building boats for the men at the yacht club, 
brought me his promise to put in a centerboard, 


THE SAILING BATTEAU 25 


put on washboards, bow deck and bowsprit all for 
five dollars, so this amount was set away until it 
would be needed in the spring. The remaining 
seven had to buy canvas for the sails, rope, blocks, 
spars, etc., and it required careful planning to 
make it cover all the necessities, while the rifle 
and tomahawk were relegated to another time. 
Mr. Kearney, owner of the sloop Eitty Maginn 
at the yacht club, coached me on the rig that was 
to be her final ‘‘grown-up ’ 7 outfit. Eleven-foot 
boom, eight-foot gaff, eight-foot hoist and sixteen- 
foot leach were settled on for the mainsail, and 
thirteen-foot hoist, ten-foot six-inch luff and six- 
foot six-inch foot were the dimensions of the jib. 
My school arithmetic was taxed to the utmost to 
find out how many yards of canvas this called for, 
but we made it eighteen yards, and this was 
bought in American drilling at ten cents a yard 
(now about fourteen cents). Then, one sunny Sat¬ 
urday in March, we pegged out the dimensions of 
mainsail and jib on the lawn, running a cord from 
peg to peg so as to give us a full-sized outline of 
the mainsail. We gave the foot a one-foot rise, 
which brought us a tall, sassy peak. The canvas 
was then unrolled, the first strip being laid along 
the leach line, and this was cut to the string along 
head and foot. Each gore was then added to this, 


26 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


overlapping to the blue line on the canvas edge, 
and pinning every foot, cutting off along the sail 
outlines until both mainsail and jib lay rough fin¬ 
ished on the lawn and there was but a small bit 
left of my roll of drilling. 

With these sails I went home and cajoled mother 
into hemming them all around, sewing down the 
gore seams and finishing the sails for grommets, 
etc. With this light canvas, an ordinary house 
sewing machine with forty cotton thread and 
heavy needle is amply strong enough. 

Before the next Saturday came around, oh, joy 
—I had the mumps! No school for two weeks and 
only two days of misery—that is what it means 
to a boy! No wonder that that disease (and 
measles) are considered by boys blessings in dis¬ 
guise, no matter what parents think of them! 
Two bad days in a darkened room, and then, still 
confined to my room, I was up and about. I had 
stored the closet full of salty paraphernalia: 
manila rope, sail needle and beeswax, a ball of 
sail-maker’s twine, some smelly, tarry marline, of 
brass grommets a box, galvanized pulley blocks— 
a sailor’s paradise forsooth! At the end of every 
seam I put in a %-in. No. 1 brass grommet. These 
little brass rings come in two parts, a “thimble” 
and a ring, costing 30 cents a gross box. You cut 


THE SAILING BATTEAU 


27 


a hole with your scissors, insert the thimble 
through one side, slip over the ring on the other, 
and turn over the edges of the hat with a marlin- 
spike or fid, or even a stout wire nail will answer. 
Finish with a blow of the hammer and there you 
are! Along head and foot these grommets go, not 
only at the end of every seam, but along the hem 
midway between the seams also, giving you one 
about every foot. Through them is rove the head 
rope and foot rope which secure the sail to gaff 
and boom respectively. Simply pass it round and 
round the spar taking in a grommet hole at every 
turn and securing with a double half hitch at the 
end of the spar. 

I got in the grommets for both mainsail and jib 
and then went at sewing on the bolt rope. An or¬ 
dinary hem will not do for a boat sail; it stretches 
too much and soon pulls the sail all out of shape 
so she will not draw well and you lose speed. You 
simply must have a bolt rope, a stout manila rope, 
sewed to the hem with sailmaker’s twine. For a 
sail such as the Margaret’s %-in. hemp rope is 
ample. Your twine should follow the lay of the 
rope, fitting neatly in the bottom of the twist and 
nowhere exposed to the rough usage that it will 
surely get if it goes round the bolt rope at any 
old angle. I had about a hundred feet of bolt rope 


28 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


to sew around the two sails, and it took two days 
to do it. Wax your twine religiously if you expect 
it to last. 

With the bolt rope on, the sails began to take 
on a real seamanlike appearance, and my next job 
was to lay them out on the floor of the room and 
mark out the reef points. One must go in every 
seam, but do not put them in the plain body of 
the sail unless you reinforce the spot with a little 
square of canvas. As I did not have but a few 
gores in my sail I had to put in these little 
squares, every one of them hand stitched. The 
reef point hole itself can either have a small 
%-inch grommet or a worked eyelet. The latter 
take longer but are stronger, and, as I had all the 
time in the world, I eyeletted them all, two rows 
of reef points, two feet apart vertically for the 
mainsail, and one row for the jib. To put in the 
reef points you cut pieces of white cotton rope 
(the %-inch size for this small sail) two feet long. 
Stick it through the eyelet hole a foot, and tie a 
knot. Put another knot on the other side of the 
sail and your reef point is secure. Both ends of it 
are next to be lashed with waxed twine, for no sea¬ 
man would tolerate a knot or a crown on the end 
of a reef point. 

By this time I was allowed at large, as the 





whistling if" a i 



Courtesy Rudder" 






















THE SAILING BATTEAU 29 


mumps were about over, but had not returned to 
school, and my first excursion was to the ship¬ 
yards where the incessant clicking of the calking 
mallets had been calling to me through the open 
windows of my room. It was late in March, and 
the tail-sparred three-masted schooners were rid¬ 
ing high in the drydocks, their bulging sides cov¬ 
ered with busy men driving in the oakum that was 
to make them tight and sound for the season. Oh, 
the Time of the Calking Mallets! It comes along 
about Lent (and tops and marbles for the small 
boys), but for us sea-faring youths it meant boat 
work in the balmy spring sunshine and good times 
to come! I headed for a soaking pool filled with 
spruce spars of every conceivable length, all with 
the bark on and all as straight as so many lances. 
They are sold at twenty-five cents an inch across 
the butt, and I was not long in picking out a 214 - 
inch stick 14 ft. 6 in. long that was to be my future 
main mast. Back to the house, where with plane 
and spokeshave the bark was peeled off and the 
mast got ready for slushing with beef tallow. This 
is rubbed in by hand—a seaman's delight—three 
or four times until enough is absorbed by the 
spruce to make the mast rings slide freely. 

My friend the wheelwright supplied the boom 
and gaff—two lV^-inch square spruce strips, en- 


30 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


tirely free from knots,—and these I worked down 
to a round with plane, spokeshave and sandpaper, 
tapering them to an inch for the gaff and 1% inch 
for the boom. The stock cost 30 cents in the 
rough. Any lumber mill nowadays can furnish 
you these spruce sticks already round and only 
requiring tapering, any diameter you prefer, so 
all three spars can now be had anywhere just as 
easily as if a shipyard were handy. 

And now to bend on the sails! First the gal¬ 
vanized mast rings, six of them, were lashed to the 
luff of the sail at each point where a brass grom¬ 
met marked the end of a seam. Next the mast was 
erected alongside the back porch, and the rings 
with sail attached slipped over it. Then gaff and 
boom were tapered with a sharp flat cut where 
the jaws were to go and the latter sawn out of 
inch oak and whittled and sandpapered smooth. 
Most boys get these jaws too wide and clumsy so 
that when put on they do not hug the mast closely. 
The way to cut them is with the back of the jaw 
along the grain and a quarter circle of the radius 
of the mast struck, after allowing not over an 
inch for the thickness of the horn of the jaw. 
Then a taper is struck from the heel of the jaw 
to its aft end and you have a narrow, thin, strong 


THE SAILING BATTEAU 81 


jaw of oak, which, when bolted to boom and gaff, 
will lie close to the mast. 

These went on as described, also a hole bored 
through the boom and gaff near the meeting point 
of the jaws, through which was rove the %-inch 
cotton rope which was to lash head and foot of 
sail to the spars. A double crown knot of this 
rope stopped it from pulling through the hole, 
and then the foot of the sail was lashed to the 
boom by running this rope around and around 
the boom, taking in a grommet along the foot at 
each turn. The two lower corners of the sail are 
called the tack and clew; the clew being the corner 
at the aft end of boom. To secure the tack, the 
lash rope must take one turn through the tack 
grommet before running out along the boom. To 
secure the clew the sail is pulled out tight, seeing 
that all lashing is taken up snug, and then she is 
belayed with a turn through clew grommet and a 
double half hitch around the boom. The boom 
ought to be about a foot longer than the sail, to 
allow for stretching, also the lash rope must be 
about three feet longer because when you come 
to reef you will need the end of this rope to belay 
the cringle, which is the last grommet at the end 
of the line of reef points, in the hem of the leach. 

! All of which I attended to in a seamanlike man- 




32 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

ner and did the same by the gaff. The two upper 
corners of the sail along the gaff are called the 
throat and peak. 

The next thing was to bend on the running 
rigging. The throat halliard for so small a 
sail as this is simply tied to a screw eye driven 
into the gaff near the meeting point of the jaws. 
The peak halliard requires a block, and the loca¬ 
tion of this block on the gaff takes some experi¬ 
ment. If too far in it will tend to draw too hard 
on the throat of the sail, if too far out will 
hoist the peak too hard. A little trial will 
give about the right place. The mast needs a 
galvanized iron withe with four rings standing 
out from it. To the aft ring is lashed the galvan¬ 
ized double pulley block which takes throat and 
peak halliards; to the forward ring the wire rope 
jib stay; and to the two side rings the wire rope 
shrouds. I whittled a shallow collar on the mast¬ 
head and fitted the withe over it tight. Then I had 
a perfectly lovely tarry half hour “ serving’’ the 
ends of those wire ropes with marline. This is a 
tarry hemp cord which fairly reeks of ships and 
shipping, and to this day I keep a wad of it in my 
pocket so that if I see too many gardens I can 
take a sniff of it and feel all right again! Wire 
rope cannot be tied without making a landlubberly 



SAILING BATTEAU WITH BOW AND STERN DECK AND WASHBOARDS 

The washboards and cockpit coaming are just being fitted in. Built recently by 
the author’s 12-year-old son. 3 



CUTTING THE MAINSAIL 

Ti»e dimensions are pegged out on the lawn and gores of the sail cut to a string 
run around the pegs. 













. 






















4 



































































THE SAILING BATTEAU 


33 


job of it, so the end is passed through the ring 
on your mast withe, bent over in an eye and the 
end lashed to the standing part with marline. 
. This is called serving it, and you have a little 
serving mallet over which a couple of turns of 
the marline are taken and then this is passed 
around and around the wire by its handle. The 
pressure exerted by it is so great that it makes 
the marline lie flat and sweat tar so as to make a 
neat smooth job of your lashing. The wire rope 
for my boat was the smallest obtainable, 3/16-inch 
diameter. 

Finally the peak and throat halliards were rove, 
and up went my new sail for the first time! She 
set nice and flat after taking up here and there, 
and the next thing to do was to put a draw in it. 
The “set” of sails explains all the reason why one 
boat will beat another with identically the same 
hull and rig and sailed equally well. Too flat a 
sail means a slow boat; too loose, a poor pointer. 
The ideal shape is a sail, nice and flat aft, and full 
along the luff, the shape of an aeroplane wing or 
bird’s wing. The wind shoots into such a sail, ex¬ 
pends its energy and is slid out along the flat leach. 
If the latter is baggy, the wind will get trapped in 
it and hold back the boat, hence, for large sails, 
the necessity for battens in the leach. My sail 





34 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


was too small for that. By setting up hard on 
the peak so as to throw a quantity of wrinkles into 
the luff, the fullness desired is in a way attained. 
I helped it by letting out a trifle of lashing rope 
along head and foot just aft of throat and tack. 

Then I went down to the shore where I found 
Cap’n Jack already started on my boat. He had 
gotten out a centerboard log of 1 y 2 x 5-inch clear 
white pine and had slotted it for a 24-inch board. 
Maybe I didn’t camp out on a saw horse for the 
rest of the afternoon and watch him make that 
board! First went in two 2 x 1-inch uprights a 
foot high and were securely spiked with galvan¬ 
ized nails into each end of the slot. To these were 
nailed the two trunk sides of % x 14-inch clear 
white pine stock, 28 inches long. These were 
calked where they abutted on the log and were 
white leaded along the uprights and log before 
nailing fast up through the bottom of the latter. 
Next, the board itself was made, of a single %-inch 
plank of hard yellow pine, with a couple of iron 
rods driven through it to prevent warping. These 
were upset at the ends and then the board was 
put in the trunk in position and an inch hole 
drilled through both sides of the trunk and the 
board down in the for’d lower corner where the 
pivot pin was to go. This was next put in, a sim- 


THE SAILING BATTEAU 35 


pie pin whittled of white pine and driven through. 

Then Cap’n Jack laid out, on the keel of my 
precious boat, a centerboard slot, drilled an inch 
hole through keel, bottom boards and keelson 
at each end of the slot and joined the holes by two 
long saw cuts. The bottom boards were then 
calked and painted where they crossed the keelson 
and finally some wicking soaked in white lead was 
laid around the edges of the slot and the center- 
board trunk screwed fast. At last I had a board! 

Next day he began with the washboards and 
bow deck. Two white pine planks we held in the 
position they were to go, along the sides, and the 
line of the gunwale was scribed on the plank from 
below. A line parallel to this and six inches in¬ 
side was next struck, and the Cap’n labored with 
his ripsaw until he had the two washboards cut 
out and ready to fit. They were then nailed down 
through the top into the gunwales and an inch 
half-round strip run along the gunwale to cover 
the crack. Along the inner edge went the coam¬ 
ing, a piece of %-inch by 3-inch yellow pine board, 
with a strip of cove molding in the corners. The 
coaming ended with a square fit about six inches 
aft of the mast. Next Cap’n Jack put in oak deck 
carlines every foot, sawed to give about two inches 
crown to the deck, and then ran the mast plank 



36 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


from coaming forward over the stem. This plank 
was six inches wide and the ends of the wash- 
hoards or “plank sheer” as they are called in 
boat building, butted against it. The space left 
was then filled with small deck strips, two inches 
wide, so accurately laid together that not a crack 
between them could be discerned. But of course 
this would never do for sea service, they would 
leak—all these deck cracks—with the first sea that 
came over the bows, so the Cap’n began calking 
all these seams just as if they were in the bottom 
of the boat! Even I was not prepared for such 
thoroughness as that, but, let me tell you, that is 
what you have to have in an able sea boat! Then 
the seams were all payed with paint and puttied, 
and then the first coat of paint went on. 

The Cap’n next began pottering about with a 
stick of spruce, carrying the while a quizzical 
smile on his grizzled features, and suddenly I 
realized with a jump of joy that he was making 
my bowsprit! A husky stick it was, six feet 
long, 2 inches square at the butt, and fined to 
an octagon after it stood out over the stem. He 
bolted it through the deck carlines, put on a two- 
ring withe and ran an iron rod down to her stem 
from the bowsprit end. 

“Thar, sonny, ye kin set up on yer jib stay till 





THE 13-FT. L.W.L. SAILING BATTEAU “MARGARET” 
The author’s first yacht, when a boy of twelve. 





























































































































































. 



















































































v 






















I 















. 





THE SAILING BATTEAU 


37 


ye bend the mast out'n her before ever thet bow¬ 
sprit will lift! J ’ Indeed you could pick up the 
whole boat by her bowsprit, as I did many times 
afterward. 

The Cap hi still had a little time left in his day, 
and so he examined my rudder with a sardonic 
grin. 

“Looks like a potato paddle, and is hung like a 
barn door!” vouchsafed he. A little rummaging 
in the shop brought forth some more white pine 
and soon he had sawn the rudder as shown in 
our drawings, reinforced with a strip along the 
bottom to prevent it warping, and then the Cap'n 
made me put on the rudder irons and do it right. 
My carpentry was of the let-it-go-at-that kind, but 
the Cap 'n soon made me realize that sea carpentry 
is “do it right or don't do it at all!” 

Next day I brought down the sails and put in a 
joyful day rigging her, while all the weather¬ 
beaten Cap'ns alongshore hee-hawed and admired 
the diminutive yacht. 1 first tried to hold the 
shrouds with screw eyes but they pulled right out, 
so I dug up 60 cents and bought the smallest gal¬ 
vanized iron chain plates, 5 inches long, and these 
were screwed to the sides of the boat about eight 
inches aft of the mast step. An eye was next put 
in the shroud wire and the shrouds hove up tight, 



38 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


with three or four turns of marline running from 
the chain plate eye to the shroud eye. Then the 
jib stay was run frojn the masthead withe with a 
set of iron rings for the jib luff grommets to tie 
to. In a larger boat you would use jib hanks, 
which can be snapped over the stay, but they do 
not come small enough for a diminutive yacht of 
13 feet L. W. L., so I used inch galvanized iron 
rings instead. This jib stay up, the double block 
for throat and peak halliard was next secured to 
the after masthead withe eye with a few turns of 
marline and the same was done to the jib halliard 
block at the forward eye. Then a jib downhaul 
block at the bowsprit tip, and I was ready for 
the running rigging. This was all %-inch white 
cotton rope, and after being rove through the 
proper blocks and secured to the spars I put on 
the cleats to which each was attached. You want 
these in galvanized iron, about the six-inch size, 
one each, for throat and peak mainsail halliards, 
jib halliard, jib downhaul, port and starboard jib 
sheets, and one for the main sheet on the stern 
transom under the tiller. For a sail of this size 
the main sheet can be just a ^-inch hemp rope, 
single, no blocks being needed. A topping lift for 
the main boom will also be wanted to prevent the 
boom dropping in the water, when the sail is let 


THE SAILING BATTEAU 39 


down and the boom happens to be outboard, and 
this I put on next, securing at the aft masthead 
eye and tying with a double half hitch at the aft 
boom end to give the right topping of the boom, 
about two feet above the deck. 

She was now ready to spread her wings. I ran 
the boat ashore on a convenient sand beach where 
she could face the wind, for it is better to make 
the first try with your rigging when the boat is 
on something solid or she will go all over the lot 
and maybe upset while you are tuning up this 
and that. Next I hauled away on throat and peak 
mainsail halliards and up went the snowy white 
sail! Aye, but that was a joyful sight! Then the 
jib, and now they were both flapping in the wind, 
everything drawing well and it was time to be off 
for a trial spin. I shoved her off, let down the 
board and gathered in the main sheet, and pres¬ 
ently she filled and was away! Speed!—you bet! 
She made all her previous time look like racing 
a dock. And now for the first time I had to hike 
well over the side in the puffs, and now and then 
had to spill wind when it drove her lee washboards 
under and water came over the side. But I was 
satisfied—she made the lighthouse a mile down 
the harbor in a little less than no time, it seemed 
to me! Mainsail was a bit too flat, but I soon 




40 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


remedied that by heaving to and hauling on the 
peak halliard so as to throw a mass of wrinkles in 
along the luff. At first the jib got away with me, 
as I had never had so large a jib to manage. 
Never have the jib up without the mainsail first, 
for its tendency is to haul the bow of the boat 
away from the wind and you have no steering 
control over her at all. In coming up into the 
wind the jib is a great help in going about quickly 
if you hold the weather sheet fast until the wind 
has had a chance to get on the other side of the 
jib thus throwing her bow around. But all these 
points of handling sails must be left for another 
chapter; suffice to conclude with the reflection that 
I now had a fine, fast, able little racer and cruiser 
that I could go anywhere in, sleep in at night, sail 
ten miles or fifty, or just knock about the bay in, 
and the whole cost of changing her from a plain 
batteau to practically a small skipjack yacht was 
not over fourteen dollars. How I handled her, 
raced her and cruised her, and how to build such 
a batteau from the planks up will be told in suc¬ 
ceeding chapters. 


CHAPTER II 


SAIL. DORY, DUCKBOAT AND SKIFF 

What first awoke me to the sailing possibilities 
of the round-bottomed boat, or skiff, was when on 
a lazy summer afternoon, when we boys were 
loafing on the porch of the Yacht Club, we noted a 
girl rowing a 16-foot Whitehall boat with a speed 
and ease that would make any boy envy her. 
There was a nice easterly blow on, with the usual 
choppy sea, and most of the yachts of the fleet 
were out in it, knocking about the bay. The tide 
was on strong, as usual, yet that girl was pulling 
her skiff in the teeth of it, across the choppy seas, 
in long, sure strokes that jumped the boat ahead 
twenty feet to the stroke. It showed easy work 
on the face of it, and of course, being a girl, she 
couldn’t have had much strength anyway! 

A brilliant idea struck me. “Say, mates, if a 
good sharpie rig were stepped in that Whitehall 
boat, just wouldn’t she go right along like a scared 
cat!” said I. 

The idea was received with tumultuous ap¬ 
proval. One of us owned a seventeen-foot St. 

41 




42 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

Lawrence skiff, which is built on the lines of the 
Whitehall rowboat, only she is clinker built, with 
lapstrakes, instead of carvel built with smooth 
planking. This boy, Harry, had a rich father who 
gave him everything he wanted, but his mother 
was as timid as a mouse and wouldn’t let him do 
anything with all his possessions, and, while all 
the rest of us had our sail batteaux, sail dories 
and sneak boats or sail ducking craft, poor Harry 
had to content himself with rowing, and so was 
“out of it” most of the time, for we went so fast 
and covered so many miles of distance that he 
hadn’t a chance. 

But here was a way to let him in on the fleet. 
“Buy a sail boat for Harry—Never!” was the 
verdict of his family, but, to step a rig in his skiff, 
—well, as Harry had been “mate” on nearly all 
our sail boats and was a good sailorman, we might 
get a rig for his boat across! 

We spent the afternoon discussing the best way 
to make the change. The first thing wanted would 
be a keel and keel board, for these long, fine, 
round-bottomed boats have too narrow a keel to 
think of putting in a centerboard, and if they have 
no keel at all will make leeway like a balloon. We 
decided on a four-inch keel, running the entire 
length of the bottom and rockered two inches in 



SAIL PLAN OF THE 17-FT. WHITEHALL BOAT, “W.B.” 

Lower dotted lines show the yellow pine keel we bolted below her built keel. 





DECK PLAN OF THE “W.B.” 

Showing arrangement of tiller and yoke. 


w. h M dti 
























































DORY, DUCKBOAT AND SKIFF 43 

a long slant towards bow and stern. This rocker- 
ing process is hard carpentering, but necessary 
or the boat will be too slow in coming about to 
get around without the help of oars. The wood 
for this keel was to be a piece of 3-inch by lVs-nich 
hard yellow pine, and, to fasten it to the bottom 
of the boat, we would use five brass % x 7-inch 
through bolts with their heads sunk flush with the 
bottom of the keel and augur bit holes drilled 
through the built keel and keelson of the skiff. 
The threads of the bolts stick through about an 
inch, and when the nuts are screwed down tight it 
makes a strong job. To make it water-tight 
around the bolts we simply tie around each bolt a 
couple of turns of wicking soaked in white lead, 
and when the new keel is drawn up tight this wick¬ 
ing is clamped in firmly between the new keel and 
the built-in keel of the boat. 

For the rig we chose the sharpie leg-o’-mutton, 
with the leach cut full to destroy that distressing 
bag-and-nigger-heel combination that usually af¬ 
flicts this type of sail. The mainsail had 15-foot 
hoist, 11-foot boom rising one foot aft, and 18-foot 
leach. The mizzen had 10-foot hoist, 6-foot boom, 
rising about 14 inches, and 12-foot leach. This 
pair of sails were made of American drilling and 
staked out on the floor of the big dock where we 





44 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


boys kept all our boats. A twine run around nails 
driven in the floor at the corners of these sail areas 
gave us something to cut to, and to get fullness in 
the leach we cut the gores of the sail perpendicu¬ 
lar to the leach, instead of parallel to it as you 
would do with an ordinary mainsail. We allowed 
4 inches of outcurve to the leach, bending a thin 
batten over a nail from peak to clew so as to get 
a fair curve. The sails were cut to these limits 
and then sewed up and hemmed all around, for a 
leg-o’-mutton sail of this size does not need a 
bolt rope. Brass %-inch grommets were next put 
in at the end of every gore and midway between 
each, and the sails were ready to bend on the 
spars. 

To make these latter we discovered that the 
planing mill carried round spruce in stock, in 14- 
and 16-foot lengths, thus doing away with the 
necessity to work them up from square stock as I 
had done with my sailing batteau. All this round 
stock needed was a little tapering at gaff and boom 
ends and mast tops and you were ready for the 
spar varnish. The mainmast was of 2%-inch round 
spruce, main boom and mizzen mast of 1%-inch 
stock, and mizzen boom of l^-inch. The rig was 
all made ready down at the club in three days of 
work, after the daily swim, and we all pitched in 


DORY, DUCKBOAT AND SKIFF 45 


and helped Harry out, as we wanted him along 
on a big consort cruise down the hay. Both sails 
were lashed to boom and mast by a running white 
cotton rope around the spar and through the 
grommets, as no halliards are wanted on this rig; 
they are a nuisance except on large sail dories. 
To step the mainmast all that was needed was a 
2%-inch hole in the bow sheets, a stout oak mast 
step bolted to ribs and keelson, and a %-inch iron 
rod run through the ribs at the bow sheets clear 
through the boat and upset on the outside. This 
is essential, to brace the boat to withstand the 
strain of the rig, or the pressure of the sail on the 
bow sheets will strain the planking and make her 
leak forward. We had the village blacksmith cut 
this rod for us and upset it over wide iron wash¬ 
ers, using an axe at one end as anvil and an ordi¬ 
nary hammer to upset the other end. 

The mizzen mast was stepped by simply screw¬ 
ing a galvanized iron U-clamp to the aft rowing 
thwart and putting a mast step in the grating 
below this thwart. This TJ-clamp can be bought at 
any pipe fitter’s, of the size to go around a 1%-inch 
iron pipe. Around the mizzen mast we also put 
the yoke for managing the rudder, for, of course, 
you should not sit ’way back in the extreme stern 
to handle a two-sail rig. The mast went through 







46 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


a hole in the yoke, and two wire cords led back 
to the yoke on the rndder, so that a boy sitting 
amidships could steer nicely. 

This boat went like a racehorse. I took the first 
spin in her, a leg out to sea and a leg back again, 
while the rest were in swimming near shore. I 
got back so fast that I nearly ran down two of 
them! The mizzen sheet was simply cleated fast 
and took care of itself on either tack, as it was 
led down to a pulley block on the stern transom 
and thence for’d to its cleat. My principal atten¬ 
tion was on the mainsail, the sheet of which was 
held in the hand and never cleated, for this boat 
was nearly as lively as a sail canoe. And fast! 
She beat most of the power boats that we met go¬ 
ing our way, when I shipped Harry and Raymond, 
my old mate of the Margaret , for a crew and 
“beef to windward.” 

In bringing a sharpie about you use your 
mizzen to help out the rudder. Get a good full 
on her, and then put the helm down hard. This 
will throw her in stays where she will most likely 
hang, so at this point back the mizzen, that is, 
push its boom out to windward by hand, when 
the wind will fill it and shove her stern around so 
that the mainsail will fill off on the other tack. 
With our 3-inch rockered keel she still made a good 


DORY, DUCKBOAT AND SKIFF 47 


deal of leeway, and was so slow in stays that we 
could generally beat the W. B. (“world-beater”) 
as Harry called her, in tacking to windward, so 
later we added a keel board. To make the rocker 
(I should have told you before), you strike a long 
curve from one end to the other of your keel plank, 
making it 3 inches deep for about 5 feet amid¬ 
ships and then tapering gradually to 1% inches at 
bow and stern, and this is easiest carpentered by 
dubbing down with a hatchet and finishing with a 
jack plane. To add a 5-foot keel board, we got a 
piece of %-inch dressed oak board 8 inches wide, 
sawed a slant at each end of it and put in three 
carriage bolts through the top of this board, so 
that by putting the ends of these bolts through 
three corresponding holes in the keel we could 
screw it fast with galvanized iron wing nuts by 
hand. To put it on, of course, you had to beach 
the W. B. and turn her over on her side, but, with 
a light boat like the St. Lawrence skiff, this was 
easy for a couple of boys to do when you were off 
for a long sail. With the keel board added she 
was less lively, made less leeway and stood up 
much stiffer in a blow. In all, I do not know of a 
better rig than this leg-o’-mutton sharpie for a 
long, fine round-bottomed rowboat, such as one 






48 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

finds in thousands on all our lakes and the salt 
water hays and sounds of the Atlantic Coast. 

Another exceedingly popular small sail boat 
with us boys was the Barnegat duckboat. As you 
will note from the plans herewith of a typical boat 
of this type, she is built something like a wide, 
shallow slipper, a “punkin’ seed” as she is called 
in many localities. The bottom is round, with a 
shallow dish curve, and the deck is almost a dupli¬ 
cate of the bottom. There is a small cockpit amid¬ 
ships, a mast hole a short distance for’d of this, 
and a centerboard trunk for a dagger type center- 
board is generally built in at the same time the 
boat is made. As a cruiser, a ducking craft, and 
a fast racer in blows that would put many a larger 
craft under three reefs, it is hard to beat the 
Barnegat duckboat. With their high, rounded 
decks they are a most easy craft for a boy to slide 
overboard out of, so the stern deck is generally 
enclosed by a high board frame, secured to the 
decks with hooks and eyes, and inside this frame 
go also the two wooden, folding oarlocks. 

We boys knew these boats well, and sailed them 
in all kinds of weather. I had an aunt down at 
Barnegat Bay, and whenever I visited her she 
knew just what to do with me, and that was to 
give me the exclusive possession of a small duck- 




TIIE IiARNEGAT DUCK BOAT 

Showing spritsail rig and dagger centerboard; a splendid boy’s sailboat for 
bay waters. 



Courtesy "Yachting 


































DORY, DUCKBOAT AND SKIFF 49 


boat and sail and turn me loose! It was just a 
little sprit sail, of some seven feet hoist and eight- 
foot boom, say, ten feet to the peak, and I was in 
a perennial condition of wet feet with her, for she 
sailed with her whole lee rail awash and I was a 
regular Roll-Down Joe—I never spilled wind un¬ 
less she was positively going to upset! These 
small duckboats were steered with an oar out 
astern through the sculling chock, and were simple 
and primitive to handle, but how they could go! 
With a gun, some snipe stools, a wad of fishing 
tackle and some bait, a boy could be so happy for 
week on end at Barnegat that Heaven itself would 
have to go some to beat it! Inside the cockpit 
coaming the baymen always put a sort of wooden 
rack in which sedge grass could be stuck so that 
the boat herself, by covering her decks with sea¬ 
weed and anchoring her off a point, would be an 
excellent duck and snipe blind. Although wet in 
a heavy sea practically no water gets over the 
cockpit coaming, and, as a boy’s boat, they are 
one of the safest types imaginable. 

Naturally the fame of such a boat would extend 
far and wide from its birthplace in Barnegat Bay, 
and soon the Spunkin’ seed” was developed into 
an able, fast racer, culminating in the Butterfly 
Class of the Bayside (L. I.) Yacht Club, where a 




50 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


fleet of 21 of these boats were ordered built at Bar- 
negat, N. J., and raced every Saturday on Long 
Island Sound. These were 14 feet long by 4 feet 
6 inches beam and usually had a crew of two to 
three boys, or one man. The sail area was in¬ 
creased to 106 square feet, that is, boom, 12 feet, 
rising 14 inches; hoist, 9 feet 6 inches; head, six 
feet; leach, 16 feet, with about 3 inches fullness. 
The sprit was retained for simplicity and made 
rather long, 14 feet, stepped low down so as to 
throw plenty of draft into the sail. All sprits are 
stepped alike, a slip noose around the mast and an 
eye for the foot of the sprit to rest in. To set the 
sail, the sprit is slipped into a pocket in the peak 
(or an eye in the bolt rope at the peak usually), 
and the peak is then raised until the foot of the 
sprit rests in the “slippery Jim,” as we called 
the sliding sprit rope. Then, to tauten the sail 
and throw wrinkles into the luff, you just raised 
the noose up along the mast and it would stay 
fast wherever put. A simple rig, and the best for 
small boats, of twelve to fourteen feet L. W. L. 

Charley Hall was the only one of us boys that 
owned a sailing duckboat. She was sixteen-feet 
by five-feet beam and had a standing rigging, 
that is, the mast was stepped in her and held so 
by wire shrouds, the sail raised with throat and 


DORY, DUCKBOAT AND SKIFF 51 


peak halliards, and she had a traveler over the 
tiller so that the main sheet block could cross the 
boat on either tack, the sheet pulling so hard as to 
require a block instead of being held by hand or 
over a cleat as with the smaller duckboats. She 
was an able, fast boat; could beat the Margaret, 
hands down, and no weather was bad enough to 
make her stay in if Charley could get in reefs 
enough. But the smaller 14-foot boat, with its 
simpler rig, we found the handiest type. She could 
do anything the big boat could do, and then some, 
for you were not handicapped by standing and 
running rigging, could leave the sails at home 
when the wind was wrong or in working up a 
crooked salt creek, and you could pick the whole 
boat up by the bow and camp under her, as she 
was so light. 

As this boat is so easy to build I will outline 
here the plans of her construction. All the ribs 
are steam bent over the same mold, both bottom 
and deck, usually of %-inch by 1-inch oak stock. 
The keel is simply a broad plank, 1-inch stock, a 
quarter inch heavier than the %-inch cedar or 
white pine planking of which the rest of the boat 
is built. The keel plank is tapered from about 
8 inches amidships to 3 at the bow, and 5 at the 
stern, in long easy lines, and is then bent up for- 




52 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

ward and aft to fit the sheer. The frames are then 
screwed onto the keel in pairs, riveted together at 
their ends, the transom secured to the keel with 
a knee and a yellow pine chime is bent around 
inside the frame joints, securing them all together 
longitudinally and taking the place of the sheer 
strakes of the batteau construction. The planks 
are next gotten out, three on a side, and planed to 
an easy taper bow and stern, so that they lie side 
by side over the ribs. They are riveted to the 
ribs, or secured with galvanized iron clout nails, 
and where deck and bottom meet, are finished 
with smooth joint, and usually a low molding or 
gunwale is run around the deck at this point. The 
cockpit coaming, and cockpit ceiling, screwed to 
the frames, is next put in and the boat is done and 
ready to calk and let swell tight. She needs a 
skeg, sawed out of pine board, and a center 
board trunk if you are going to sail her. The 
centerboard trunk should of course be built 
before the planking goes on while the boat is still 
in the keel and frame stage. A slot is cut in the 
keel between the ribs just for’d of the cockpit, 
two posts let in and the trunk sides screwed to 
these posts and screwed to the bottom from the 
under side of the keel. The top of the board ends 
in a corresponding slot in the deck planking, and 


DORY, DUCKBOAT AND SKIFF 53 

a dagger centerboard, 12 inches by 3 feet long 
with a stop head, is shoved down through the 
trunk, and it is removed entirely and stowed below 
when not in use. The mast hole is cut in the deck 
partner plank and the mast step screwed securely 
to the keel plank. Some boys of my acquaintance, 
not feeling expert enough in their carpentry to 
plank this duckboat, have built her as above de¬ 
scribed, fitting the planks as closely as they could, 
and then put a canvas deck and bottom on her just 
like a canoe, painting it to get her water-tight. 
Such a boat will do nicely anywhere but in rocky 
waters. 

Down Boston way, where one sails a good deal 
on the open ocean for pleasure and the heavy 
ocean swells run right into the harbors in an east¬ 
erly blow, the demand for an able, deep sea boat 
has brought another favorite boy’s sail craft into 
existence—the sail dory. The Barnegat duckboat 
is too low and shovel-nosed to live in a heavy 
ocean sea. The choppy and comparatively low 
seas that get up on inland waters and such wide 
bays as Barnegat and Great South Bay she man¬ 
ages very well, albeit somewhat wet. But, sup¬ 
pose one end of her is held up on a comber six 
feet high, while her nose is rammed into the breast 
of another of the same height,—you can readily 



54 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


see her whole for’d deck going under and the boat 
swamped. What is wanted is a high, lifting bow, 
and high sides, a deep, narrow boat, non-capsizar 
ble because of her depth, and non-swampable be¬ 
cause of her high sides and bow,—in a word the 
deep-sea Viking type of boat. Such a craft is the 
sail dory, such as you will see on Long Island 
Sound and Down East from Buzzard Bay to 
Maine. In addition to this the dory is light enough 
and flat-bottomed enough to be easily beached, 
another fine feature for a boy’s boat, as going 
ashore on a strange coast is half the fun! In gen¬ 
eral, the dory construction consists in a somewhat 
narrow, flat bottom board, usually in three planks, 
a natural-bend stem piece secured to this bottom 
board at one end, and a deep, narrow transom 
stern secured to the other end of the bottom plank 
with a bent knee. Four frames, sawn out of 
natural-bend rib stock, give you the ribs and 
around these are wrapped the side planking, four 
planks on a side. You will see that she is rather 
an easy boat to *build, not as simple as a batteau 
but considerably easier than a narrow-planked 
round-bottomed rowboat which only an expert 
ship carpenter can put together. The original 
Swampscott Dory was 18 feet long by 4 feet 6 
inches beam, 30 inches deep forward and 28 inches 


DORY, DUCKBOAT AND SKIFF 55 


aft. It carried a rig, as shown in the illustrations, 
of a wide shallow leg-o’-mutton, 13-foot 6-inch 
foot, 11-foot hoist, 16-foot leach, and a jib of 8-foot 
hoist, 6-foot foot and 7-foot leach. A centerboard 
was let in between the first and second frames 
for’d, giving you room enough for a 3-foot board. 
About two hundred pounds of ballast in sand bags 
ought to go on her bottom, and so rigged and bal¬ 
lasted she makes a very able, fast boat for a boy 
of twelve to fourteen years. 

It seemed to me that a sail dory would be a 
splendid proposition for cruising in Barnegat Bay 
down near the Inlet where the ocean rollers come 
into the bay and the distances are so great that a 
very neat sea gets up in the bay itself. Such a 
boat could live in weather that would either send 
the duckboat to port or else make a very wet boat 
of her, and so I ordered the largest and best of 
the sail dories, the decked 17-footer, as made by 
the Toppan or Cape Cod Dory Companies. This 
boat was wider than the regular dory, being 5 feet 
6 inches beam for 17 feet of length. She was about 
the same depth fore and aft, but was decked over, 
with a 10-foot cockpit about 4 feet wide, and a 
traveler astern to lift the main sheet block over 
the tiller. 

This boat, the Bee by name, carries much more 




56 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


sail than the smaller and narrower type of dory. 
She has 17-foot hoist, 18-foot boom rising two 
feet, and 14-foot hoist by 8-foot foot for the jib. 
The rig is standing, that is, there is main halliard, 
jib halliard, jib downhaul and wire rope shrouds 
for the mast. She will take four to six people 
easily, and for a cruiser for four boys is unsur¬ 
passed. Seaside Park is the furthest point by 
rail to the hunting and fishing grounds of Barne- 
gat, and from there down to Cedar Creek is six 
miles further before the shooting gets good, and 
ten miles to the Inlet where you get channel bass 
in the surf, also weaks and croakers and bluefish, 
small weakfish in the bay, and snipe and ducks in 
their season. Further on, down towards Great 
Bay and Little Egg Inlet, the water is still rougher 
and the shooting and fishing splendid. To reach 
those places requires a long roundabout trip by 
rail, and we have also tried rowboat and sand 
tramping with a camp on the beach for several 
days to get to it. Sand camping is the hardest 
of all sorts of outdoor camping; the sand blows 
into everything, the mosquitoes and flies are a 
pest, and the wind blows so hard that even your 
fire gets blown out! The big sail dory changed all 
that. Now we take the train for Seaside Park, 
hoist our sail and are away for the delights of a 


SAIT. PLAN 



the 17 -ft. 


OVER ALL CLUB 


SAILING DORY, 













































.. 








































DORY, DUCKBOAT AND SKIFF 57 

cruise in those waters. Decoys, provisions and a 
cockpit tent are kept aboard under the bow deck, 
so that all we have to bring is the rods, guns, 
ammunition and bait. A water butt takes care 
of the all-important water problem, and we go 
ashore to fish and shoot wherever we please, as 
you can beach her anywhere. At night, we top 
up the boom and tie the ridge of the cockpit tent 
underneath the boom, fastening the sides down 
to staples outside the cockpit coaming. A scrim 
front and rear curtain keep out the mosquitoes, 
and we have four ticking bags which we fill with 
dry seagrass on the beach and put one on each 
side of the centerboard and two up in the stern 
sheets. The grating is taken up out of the bot¬ 
tom and hung just below the cockpit seats, with 
turn-out cleats for the purpose, and so you get 
two stories, so to speak, for our tent, and there 
is plenty of room for four to sleep aboard. In 
the morning the little alcohol yacht stove is pulled 
out in its tin galley box, and a breakfast of coffee, 
bacon, eggs, fried fish and creamed potatoes is 
furnished by the cook—which is me! Then a 
lunch is put up and we have the whole day ashore 
fishing or in the snipe blinds. Returning at night¬ 
fall, a big feed is cooked up aboard the boat, and 
a little later we are ready to turn in, for ‘ 4 early 


58 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


to rise” is the only rule to get good fishing and 
shooting. No sand, no mosquitoes, no wind blow¬ 
ing everything to kingdom come—it’s a great 
improvement over our old camping days on the 
beach, and now we can go forty miles, when ten 
used to be our outmost limit. 

The smallest sail dory is the 14-foot open sail¬ 
ing boat, virtually the Gloucester fishing dory 
with a sail stepped in her. The hoist for this 
would be 10 feet, boom 13 feet, rising 12 inches. 
The simplest possible spar rig would be a hori¬ 
zontal sprit, running from a slippery Jim on the 
mast to a pocket in the clew. The mainsheet is 
bent to a ring in the clew bolt rope and there you 
are! This makes a very nice boat for young boys, 
but rather too small for youths of sixteen and up. 
If you live in a town where there are shipyards, 
especially in New England, it will not be so very 
hard to build yourself a sail dory of the 17-foot or 
18-foot size. Dory side planks have so very much 
sheer to them that the plain lumber mill board 
will cut to a lot of waste, so regular white pine 
dory stock is kept on hand by most Down East 
shipyards. This is natural-bent tree, sawed into 
%- or %-inch stock. Then the ribs, which are of 
tamarack (or, as it is often called, hackmatack), 
are sawed out of natural crooks, which are kept in 


18 -ft. decked racing dories 


























. 
































DORY, DUCKBOAT AND SKIFF 59 


stock at the shipyard. Enlarge the frame pat¬ 
terns I give you in the illustrations to fit the size 
you want on big sheets of brown paper, cut out 
and take to the shipyard where you can try them 
on the stock and pick out what you will need and 
have it sawed out on the band saw at the yard. 
In the same way the stem is gotten out of a 5-foot 
piece of 2-inch oak, natural curve, and with it the 
stern knee. For bottom board you will want 
%-inch white pine stock, 6 or 8 inches wide, in the 
14-foot merchant length, ordinary dressed lumber 
boards, and, for side planks, dressed white pine, 
%-inch stock, 20 feet long, about 10 inches wide, 
for the six side planks, and 14 for the two gar- 
boards. These will be natural sweep stock. 

Enlarge your bottom plan to full size, and get 
out the three bottom planks to make up, the center 
plank being full width, as in it you must cut the 
centerboard slot and so do not want the centerline 
to be a crack. Now clamp together and tack with 
a few cross pieces, and then set up your four 
frames, screwing through the bottom with No. 10 
brass screws, allowing three feet for the center- 
board frame and the rest spacing about even, 
some 2 feet 10 inches apart. Plumb and set up 
the stem and stem knee, and secure to bottom 
board with three or four galvanized iron screws 


60 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

each. The frames and stern transom are then 
beveled to fit the planking, the angles being gotten 
by running strips of light stuff around, touching 
all the frames. The stem knee has of course been 
rabbeted to receive the planking before setting up. 

You are now ready for the garboard planks, the 
spiling of which will be shown from the frame 
flats. Bend your wide garboard plank around and 
mark the patte'rn points on it direct. The bottom 
line can be scribed with a pencil and the upper 
points marked and joined with a long flexible 
sweep strip. Saw it and its mate out with the rip 
saw and nail on with galvanized iron clout nails, 
about 10 d. is right, clinched on the inside of each 
rib. Bore holes in the plank and rib before driv¬ 
ing the nails, to prevent splitting, and do not nail 
anything until the garboard is a perfect fit every¬ 
where. The bottom planking wants about ly^-inch 
rocker on it before scribing the bottom line of the 
garboard. Note that the bow and stern of the 
garboard are much wider than the midships, about 
12 inches for’d and aft and 6 inches amidships is 
about right. Also note that the first two planks 
come in line on the stem and stern, there being 
no knuckle, and are almost carvel fitted at the cen¬ 
ter frames. The next two lap and are beveled to 
a fit and clinch-nailed together. The planks can 


DORY, DUCKBOAT AND SKIFF 61 


be wrapped and marked in place or a spiling taken 
from a straight strip, either way you prefer. 
After the garboards are on, the craft will be 
strong enough to turn over and build upside down, 
as that is much the easiest way to plank her. 

After the planking is finished you will want a 

2 x %-inch oak gunwale wrapped around outside, 
and a 2 x %-inch pine riser secured around inside 
about 8 inches below gunwale to rest the thwarts 
on. The centerboard trunk is made of two oak 
posts of 2 x %-inch stock (same stock as gunwale) 
and two wide 17- or 18-inch white pine boards, 

3 feet long, are screwed to each side of the posts 
over a white lead and wicking filler, making a 
tight trunk, with about an inch of the posts stick¬ 
ing down below the trunk. The posts are then 
notched half an inch to give the ends of the trunk 
something to bite on when in place, and a %-inch 
by 3-foot slot is then cut in the center bottom 
board of the dory. (See construction drawings 
in Part One, Chapter IV.) Drive in the posts, 
with a turn of lamp wicking, soaked in white lead 
paste completely around the slot, and secure with 
galvanized iron screws driven up through the bot¬ 
tom of the dory into the bottom board of the trunk. 
This job should be tight enough to squeeze out 
paint all around. The center board is next gotten 


62 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


out of %-inch dressed oak and hung by a white 
pine pinion driven through the side of the trunk in 
the lower for’d corner and the dory is ready for 
sails. Brace the mast step thwart by knees to the 
planking and put in the step with the grain run¬ 
ning across the boat. The mast will be two to 
three inches for the 14-foot and 18-foot dories, and 
the other dimensions I leave to you. I would sug¬ 
gest 14 feet by 3 feet 10 inches for the 14-foot size, 
18 feet by 4 feet 6 inches for the 18-foot open dory 
and 17 feet by 5 feet 6 inches for the decked sail¬ 
ing dory. Scaling in proportion on the frame 
plans, etc., given here without dimensions, you can 
make up your patterns and build the boat any size 
you prefer. These drawings were taken by Mr. 
Victor Slocum from the original Swampscott dory 
and we are indebted to him and the Yachting 
Magazine for their use. 


CHAPTER in 


CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 

While the smaller sail craft, dories, duckboats 
and sailing batteaux answer very well for the boy 
of from ten to fifteen years of age, the youth of 
sixteen to twenty will be more satisfied with a 
larger craft; one that can enter the regular races 
of the Yacht Club—and right here enters a great 
sport, one of the finest—yacht racing—a sport 
that brings out to the full all the skill, seaman¬ 
ship, sportsmanship and gentlemanliness that is 
in the youth. No sport is more real—less savor¬ 
ing of a mere game—and no sport is a keener test 
of character. There are times when it is essential 
to hold your way,—to have your rights; when 
giving way is not generosity but mawkishness; 
and there are other times in this great sport when 
a really unfair advantage coai be taken, and then 
the promptings of generous sportsmanship may 
take full sway; and, as these situations occur 
again and again in the great game of life, there is 
no better training for the youth than yachting, 

if he is to be a whole man in later years. 

63 



64 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

The cat rig has the great merit of simplicity. 
There is only one sail to manage, and that means 
a good deal for an inexperienced skipper in a 
heavy blow. The disadvantages of the cat are 
its hard helm, its slowness in proportion to its 
sail speed, and—to me—its simplicity! By that 
I mean the lack of finesse in sailing which is other¬ 
wise made possible in the sloop rig by the jib. I 
graduated from the cat rig at the age of eleven, 
and never returned to it in any of my own boats. 
The jib, with its infinite possibilities in expert 
seamanship, in balance of the helm, in nicety of 
judgment, has always been to me a fascinating 
sail, and of course jib and mainsail, foot for foot 
area, are always faster than mainsail alone, 
partly because the balance of the sail takes 
the hard helm off her, eliminating that back rud¬ 
der pressure so retarding to the speed of the boat, 
and partly because the sloop lines are finer, 
the cat requiring a tubby model to withstand the 
big pressure of her mainsail. Of late years de¬ 
signers have gotten somewhat finer lines >by 
using the sliding gunter rig for small cats and 
topping up the gaff as high as can be swung, 
thus putting the bulk of the sail pressure low 
down. This is an important idea, boys, and I want 
you to get it. If you look at any of the older 





RACING WITH SAIL DORIES 



Courtesy “Yachting.” 





























CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 65 


cat models you will find the gaff nearly as long 
as the boom, the sail, when hoisted, very square, 
with a great peak towering aloft and well out from 
the mast. Now, the wind pressure is always 
heavier up above the water than right on it—that 
is the reason your small boat’s sail will often hang 
slack, while the big fellow bowls right ahead; he 
has a puff of wind that has raised off the water 
and passed over your head. Now this big accumu¬ 
lation of wind pressure up in the peak gives a 
heavy capsizing effect on the boat, and to with¬ 
stand it you have to use the tubby cat model, 
more than half as wide as she is long. Compen¬ 
sating for this by making it very shallow and dish¬ 
like, you get considerable speed on a flat keel, 
but as soon as she heels she digs her bilge into the 
briny and you have an awkward shape to drive 
through the water. 

But if you top up that peak nearly straight, 
you get the bulk of the sail area down low, almost 
like a leg-o’-mutton, as shown in the illustration 
of a handsome little 16-foot catboat for boys, and 
the rig becomes safe and the lines of the boat fine 
and fast. 

Let us look at that model a little more, for she 
is a fine boy’s boat, and, by building her with a 
skipjack dead-rise bottom, she can be built by any 


66 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


boy from 16 years up in age. The lap strake 
shown in the designs is too complicated for ordi¬ 
nary carpentry, so I suggest instead a skipjack 
mid-ship section, taking but three wide boards on 
a side, and using the same keel, stem, transom and 
skeg shown. You will note that the skipjack rib 
is in two straight pieces joined by a knee brace, 
and a chine is bent around the outside of the 
frames at this joint, and against this chine the 
upper and lower planks can swell shut. If you 
tried to join them direct, as is often done with 
motor boats, it is hard to keep the joint tight, as 
there is nothing for the planks to swell against 
when the boat goes overboard. However, work¬ 
ing out a set of five frames, you can design your¬ 
self a skipjack cat that will be as fast and sassy 
as the boat shown in our plans. I would suggest 
%-inch white cedar planking, and chine and 
frames, also keel board, of 1-inch white oak. 
The keel board had best be of 1 x 12-inch dressed 
oak plank, rockered as in plans, transom of the 
same stock, stem and stern knee of 2-inch stock. 
The deck I would make of %-inch white pine 
boards covered with 10-ounce duck canvas, and 
the board would be p Yerably of straight posts as 
shown. 

A word on the sliding gunter rig. If you top 


FRAME PLAN AND DECK PLAN OF 1G-FT. LAP STRAKE CATUOAT Courtesy " Yachting . 















































































































































































CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 67 


up the gaff until you get it almost perpendicular 
it is almost impossible to make the jaws stay 
around the mast. They cannot be made of wood 
and get enough bend, but they can be made of 
brass rodding or heavy galvanized wire for canoe 
rigs, and are held to the mast by the topmost mast 
ring. This is essentially a weak construction, and, 
while well enough for canoes and small boats, 
when your sail pressures get large the best plan 
is to discard it altogether and use a sliding gun- 
ter. This, as you will note from the drawing, is 
a metal gaff collar, a standard boat fitting, slid¬ 
ing up and down the mast, and to it is bolted 
the end of the gaff. A single halliard raises the 
latter, and it is shown rigged with a bridle to dis¬ 
tribute the strain on the gaff, which ought to be 
as light a spar as possible to save overhead 
weight. The sail has 115 square feet of surface 
and is 14-foot boom, 12-foot gaff, and 19-foot 6- 
inch leach, with hoist about 5 feet. The mast 
should be 2-inch, 10 feet long. 

A great advantage of all cats, as cruisers, is 
that the mast is stepped well for’d, giving one a 
big, open cockpit. This permits a cabin on even a 
20-foot cat, and a cabin is a tremendous con¬ 
venience. It need not necessarily be high enough 
to stand up in—never spoil the looks of your boat 



68 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

for cabin height; but it does afford a refuge in 
case of thunder squalls, a place for the galley 
and a sleeping place at night, eked out by a tent 
over the cockpit, hung from the boom. With such 
a catboat a couple of fellows can cruise anywhere 
there is fishing, shooting or racing to be had, liv¬ 
ing aboard the boat for a week and having a high 
old time at it, infinitely preferable to going ashore 
and setting up a tent on the sand. 

Closely allied to the sail cat shown is the jib- 
and-mainsail sailing skiff, a popular design for 
youths being included in these chapters. You can 
convert any oyster skiff to this rig with very little 
work. The dimensions of the average skiff are 21 
feet by about 6 feet 6 inches beam, and they can be 
picked up alongshore for from $50 used to $100 
new. They have a centerboard, and usually the 
oystermen rig them with a large sprit sail and 
removable mast. The so-called one-design racing 
dory class, recently built for the Panama Yacht 
Club, is practically just what you can do by step¬ 
ping a standing rig in an oyster “skiff” as the 
longshoremen call them. The boat is simply 
decked over fore and aft, with washboards and a 
traveler over the tiller (or, in the design shown, 
the rudder is underhung and worked through a 
post coming up just aft of the cockpit but the old 







A KNOCKABOUT RIG FOR A 22-FT. DECKED SKIFF 

An ordinary oyster skiff can be rigged on this model at small expense, making 
a splendid cruiser of her. 


Courtesy ‘‘Yachting.” 









































































CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 69 


skiff rudder is just as good and easier to handle). 
The dimensions are 22 feet long by 6 feet 4 inches 
beam, and she carries 228 square feet of sail. The 
mainsail is 15 feet 6 inches boom, 12 feet 9 inches 
hoist, 9 feet 7 inches gaff, and 22 feet 4 inches 
leach. The jib is 15 feet 6 inches hoist, 13 feet 8 
inches luff, and 6 feet 6 inches foot. A spinnaker 
with 10-foot 6-inch spar is provided for racing. 

But the best small racing craft of all for boys 
is the knockabout. In the old days designers used 
to build a yacht with sharp vertical bow and a 
long bowsprit that overhung like a spar. Such a 
boat always slowed up in a head sea, and, when 
running before the wind, was apt to dig her nose 
into a wave and ‘ ‘ broach to, ’ 7 that is, slew around 
on her nose until broadside to the wind, when she 
would generally capsize. These were bad points, 
and the short body of the yacht made good sharp 
entrance lines impossible. So, why not have the 
bowsprit part of the boat hull itself, so that it 
would lift her up in a heavy sea and make it easy 
also for the designer to give her long, easy en¬ 
trance lines? In a word, the knockabout model 
of to-day. Another thing: most boats sail on 
their sides, not on their bottoms, and the formula 
for speed says that, other things being equal, a 
boat is faster in proportion to her length. Now a 



70 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

knockabout on an even keel will draw only, say, 
15 to 25 feet of waterline, but when she heels down 
on her side she puts all of her shell into the water 
for its full length, 25 to 40 feet respectively, 
and thereby increases her speed, besides giving 
her good lifting power when her nose hits a wave. 
And so the knockabout came to stay, and, as it 
beat the older models all to pieces and was much 
safer to sail, the latter went out of existence en¬ 
tirely. In general the knockabouts are built with 
rather shallow sections and a deep fin keel; the 
overhang fore and aft when on an even keel is very 
large, taking the place of the bowsprit and stern 
outrigger of early days; the jib is entirely inboard 
so you do not have to crawl out over the pickle 
and get soused with salt spray in furling it (as I 
had to when a boy); the mainsail is of the modern 
shape, with gaff cocked well up and center of 
effort kept low—and how she can sail! I Ve seen 
the large Class Q knockabouts raced against the 
famous Sandy Hook boats and give them quite 
an argument before they dropped astern, and 
the little ones can beat anything in cats, sloops 
or dories that carry sail. Our illustrations show 
the smallest of the knockabouts, the 16 feet L. W. 
L., 26 feet over all. The beam is 7 feet 5 inches, 
so you see she is not so narrow; the draft, in- 








































CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 71 

eluding fin, is 4 feet 6 inches or about three feet 
to the bottom of the boat measured from the traff- 
rail. They carry about 1,700 pounds of lead bal¬ 
last in the keel, and of course are too compli¬ 
cated for youthful carpenters to attempt. The 
best way to acquire one is to buy them second 
hand in the fall, when their rich owners are will¬ 
ing to part with them for a few hundred dollars, 
having usually built the boat solely to enter some 
one-design races. The sail area of the boat shown 
is 330 square feet, which is a good deal more than 
double that of the 16-foot catboat just described, 
and a third larger than that of the sail skiff. The 
boom is 19 feet 6 inches; gaff, 18 feet 4 inches; 
hoist, 10 feet; and leach, 32 feet. Jib has 18-ft. 
hoist; 14-ft. luff and 7 ft. 10 in. foot. A spinnaker 
with 18-foot pole, completes the sail set. A little 
house or cabin aids in making her a good weather 
boat, besides providing a cruising shelter, of sorts. 
This boat is primarily for racing, but modern de¬ 
signers have worked up cruising knockabouts that 
are better cruisers than any of the older designs 
of cats and sloops. 

In the design you will note that the matter of 
strength in mounting and staying the mast has 
received especial attention. The two weak points 
in any boat are the mast step and the shroud an- 


72 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


chorages. These, with the mast itself, constitute 
a triangular truss that must withstand the enor¬ 
mous sail pressures. No ordinary mast step will 
do; note that the step used in knockabouts is a 
heavy oak timber, secured to half a dozen ribs as 
well as to the stem for’d. The ribs and mast 
partners are braced at the mast sections with 
knees, and doubled ribs are put in here to give a 
stout anchorage to the chain plates. Note also 
a new rope in the rigging that you have not seen 
before. It runs from the masthead back to a cleat 
about amidships on each side, and is called the 
backstay preventer (or rather preventers as there 
are two of them, to port and starboard). One or 
the other of them is in use when broad reaching 
or going dead before the wind with spinnaker set 
in both cases. The ordinary drive of the main¬ 
sail is taken care of by the aft pitch of the main 
shrouds, but, with the spinnaker added, the pres¬ 
sure would pull the mast over forward if it were 
not for the preventer backstay. The lee pre¬ 
venter is slacked off its cleat and the weather one 
belayed as the boat comes about so there is always 
one of them working. 

While the design of a knockabout looks hard, I 
believe that a simplified model, with centerboard 
(as many of them are designed), and the planking 


FRAME AND BODY PLANS OF A SMALL KNOCKABOUT 

26 ft. over all, 16-ft. L.W.L., this is a fine little model for youthful skippers, and not 

too hard to build with canvas skin. Courtesy “ Yachting. 






























































































































































































































































































CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 78 

covered with canvas, would not be out of the ques¬ 
tion for four youths of 18 to 20 years of age to 
build. I would suggest a 2 x 12-inch oak keel, 
steam bent to fit the lines shown and take the 
place of the stern hook on the usual three-piece 
keel of larger craft. A natural bent 3 x 6-inch oak 
stem and a stern knee of 3-inch stock serve for 
your main members. Oak stern transom of 1 %- 
inch stock; planking of %-inch white pine with 
No. 00 duck canvas skin. An 8-foot board will 
be plenty for this boat, and the bottom of center- 
board trunk logs are rockered to fit the sweep of 
the keel. The logs would be of 2 x 12-inch hard 
pine; upper boards of 1%-inch yellow pine; cen¬ 
terboard of 1%-inch willow oak. Both board and 
trunk are through-bolted with half-inch iron rods. 
You would need a skeg and rudder post, and the 
boat itself ought to be a foot wider beam than the 
dimensions of the one shown with keel, and the 
ballast, about 800 pounds of it, in sand bags in 
each bilge behind the cockpit seats, making 1,600 
pounds in all. Ribs of 1 x %-inch oak stock, steam 
bent. A heavy sawed frame every third rib, got¬ 
ten out of 2-inch stock, makes a stiffer boat of 
her, leaving the work of pinning the planks firmly 
together to the thinner steam-bent ribs. Our 
chapter on boat construction in general will give 


74 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

you details of construction of all minor parts of 
a boat of this size, so that it will not be hard to 
design in the rest of the boat yourself. 

The fine points of boat sailing really deserve a 
chapter to themselves but our space in this book 
is limited. Indeed whole books have been written 
on the sole subject of handling a racing yacht 
under all conditions that are likely to occur dur¬ 
ing the adventures of the racing skipper. How¬ 
ever, for the youthful beginner, I believe that I 
will get in here about all you will need to make a 
good all-around skipper, leaving the rest for you 
to learn in the big school of experience in actual 
cruising and racing. 

To begin with the cat rig. She carries neces¬ 
sarily a hard weather helm, due to the immense 
driving power of the mainsail which is unbalanced 
by any jib. This necessitates the rudder being 
always a considerable bit out of true with the keel 
and retards her speed, as you may have often 
noted in your motor boat in turning a curve and 
observing her engine slowing down and the boat 
losing headway. There is no help for this with 
the cat rig, and she pulls your arm off, nearly, par¬ 
ticularly when you are a boy of only fourteen 
years, as I was when I sailed the famous cat 
Peggy owned by my unde. To relieve this pull 


CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 75 

on your arm we used the ropes for securing the 
boom in the lazy tongs when in port. These are 
short half-inch hemp bent through rings on the 
deck, and a turn of the weather rope around the 
tiller took the strain off your arm yet gave you 
entire control by keeping a hand on the tail of it. 
A good hunch, for a cat rig of 18-foot boom and 
over. 

In handling a cat, tacking, all beginners learn 
as a first instruction to keep her just rap full, 
that is, just enough off the wind to prevent the 
sail luffing or shivering up near the mast. A good 
skipper will follow his wind closely, eating up into 
it in strong puffs instead of spilling it by letting 
go sheet, yet not sending her up so smart as to 
kill her headway. When the wind slackens do not 
keep her broad away but hold her reasonably on 
the course and do your gaining in the puffs or 
“catspaws.” You can see these come over the 
water in black prickles over the waves. Your 
only danger when ‘ ‘ on the wind,* ’ or tacking, is in 
getting such a knockdown puff that you cannot let 
out sheet because the boom is already fouled in 
the water. This causes more upsets than any 
other thing that besets amateur sailors. If in 
such a fix, loose the peak halliard instantly. 
Throwing her sharp up into the wind will help 


76 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

some, but you really can not do much with either 
helm or sheet, and had best use the time you have 
left, which is a few seconds, in spilling the peak, 
which will save her every time. For this reason 
always have the halliards belayed with a single 
turn, crossing over the cleat once and then under 
it, the free end of the halliard in a short loop. 
The rest of the halliard is neatly coiled down on 
deck in a tight rope spiral, and a pull on the loop 
frees the halliard and she runs out without a mo¬ 
ment’s loss of time in lifting a coil off the cleat 
or anything else. It is best to anticipate what 
appears to be a knockdown catspaw coming by 
shoving her up into the wind and spilling some by 
starting the sheet, when you will only get a furious 
luffing instead of your boom being driven under 
water. 

Another cause of upset on the wind is main 
sheet made fast. Only sheer carelessness would tol¬ 
erate this in a small boat, and in a larger one the 
sheet is belayed like a halliard so it can instantly 
be started. For a sail canoe the sheet is held 
always in the hand, as she is so lively that she 
responds heavily to the least change of wind and 
at no time is the pull of the sheet very heavy. 
In small sail batteaux, duckboats, sail dories and 
cats, the sheet has a single turn under the aft horn 



THE ANNISQUAM 16-FT. CATBOAT 

Carvel built and a heavier and abler craft than the lap strake design. 

Courtesy "Yachting.” 





























CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 77 

of the cleat, so it can be easily shifted to spill 
wind, yet half of its pull is taken by the cleat. 
This also prevents the sail “skying” under the 
lifting power of the peak and prevents the peak 
itself bagging off to leeward when it lifts the 
boom. In cats and knockabouts of 18 to 30 feet 
over all the main sheet is rove through one or 
more boom blocks and the traveler block and then 
finally secured on the main cleat with a loop under 
the turn. Our various sail craft drawings each 
show different ways of rigging the main sheet. 

A final point in sailing on the wind is to know 
when you have the right of way and to hold it at 
all costs, only yielding to the road hog when it is 
absolutely necessary to save your boat—not his! 
Warn him by the hail, “Bight of Way!” and then 
hold your course. Nowadays, particularly among 
the newly rich, one encounters skippers ignorant 
of the Buies of the Boad at sea, and, as these 
gentry have an idea that they own the earth any¬ 
way because of their lately acquired wealth, they 
are apt to pay small attention to the rights of 
others when sailing. You have the right of way 
when on the starboard tack; that is, when the 
wind is blowing on your face when you look to 
starboard. Hold your course; it is up to the other 
fellow to keep clear, and if you do not hold your 


78 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

course lie does not know what to do himself. An¬ 
other way to remember it is, “When your boom 
is out to port, you’re on the starboard tack” and 
vice versa, so when you are tacking out to a mark 
and are reaching it on the starboard tack, and 
your rival is swooping down on it on the port tack, 
keep on your way and round the mark. If he 
crosses ahead of you he is taking chances of being 
run down, and if he runs into you to port he must 
stand all damages to your boat. His best scheme 
is to crowd down on you as close as he dares and 
then luff up hard, filling in on you to windward 
when you come around the mark and lay over 
on the port tack. You still have the right of way, 
as the windward boat must keep clear of the one 
on his lee. 

In broad and close reaching, that is, running 
across the wind either with it somewhat astern 
(broad) or somewhat ahead (close) you have a 
fast point of sailing and little danger, and the sail 
is let out until it shows a trifle of quiver in the 
luff. Do not try to follow the wind too much, as 
she is apt to yaw and broach in the seas, par¬ 
ticularly if long and heavy ones, and the continual 
drag of the rudder in rectifying her course will 
slow her down a lot. It is much better to antici¬ 
pate,—“feel your boat,” as it is called—a mere 





A 1(>-FT. RACING CATBOAT 


Courtesy "Yachting." 






























CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 79 


flip of the tiller, taken at the right moment before 
she begins to yaw and slew, stopping the tendency 
without any undue drag. If she geh away from 
you, let her go and ease her back to the course 
gradually. Always aim to land to weather of your 
mark, so as to have something to come and go on. 
If it is before the wind on the homeward stretch, 
have the spinnaker ready to let go, for every sec¬ 
ond counts with it after you round the mark. Cut 
it close and let go the pole. 

Before the wind is, to my mind, the most dan¬ 
gerous point of sailing to the tyro skipper, par¬ 
ticularly in handling a cat. There are two things 
to look out for, jibing and broaching to, also bal¬ 
looning of the mainsail. The peak tries to raise 
the sail up more than ever, and, as the sheet can¬ 
not now hold it down, it may throw the boom up 
so that the wind catches under it. The result is a 
folding up or ballooning of the mainsail, a tre¬ 
mendous jibe as the boom falls over on the other 
side of the mast, and, most likely, an upset or a 
cracked mast. The prevention for such condition 
is to slack off the peak halliards quite a bit, enough 
to drop a big, inactive bag in the peak, and, in 
a high wind, drop the gaff down altogether, letting 
it hang behind the mast. These precautions are 
necessary with the old-design, broad cat sails 


80 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


whenever you have a heavy wind astern and high 
rolling seas. The modern cat sail, with nearly 
vertical boom and battened leach has much less of 
this tendency to balloon, as the lifting of the gaff 
is impossible—it is cocked up already as high 
as it can go! 

“Broaching to” occurs when a boat is being 
driven hard before the wind in a heavy sea and 
catches the wave ahead. She at once buries her 
nose in it, and, as the rear wave lifts her stern, 
she slews around broadside on, with main boom 
dragging in the water, and likely, upsets. The 
old models, with sharp, straight stems and hard 
lines for’d, were particularly apt to this sin, and 
the cure for it was to carry less sail, put in a reef, 
so as to still get the benefit of the lift of the peak. 
Another way was to sail slightly off dead before 
the wind. Modern boats, with long overhanging 
bows lift over such waves when they catch them, 
and are far less likely to broach to. 

Jibing is a part of the regular game of sailing, 
and, if done right is no great storm on a small 
craft. When you are dead before the wind the 
boom has but little preference as to which side it 
will go from your mast, and if you let her yaw 
or sheer much from dead before the wind towards 
the side where your boom is, the wind will get 


Courtesy “Yachting. 





















































































































































































































CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 81 


behind it and throw it around suddenly and vio¬ 
lently, sweeping everything before it, and, if the 
wind is strong and the boom large, the craft will 
most likely capsize with her own momentum. Yet 
if this same jibe is performed intentionally, and 
the boom hauled close aboard before throwing her 
around with the helm so as to get the wind on 
the other side of the sail, it can be done without 
much danger and is often done so, in cruising and 
racing, when the course changes from dead be¬ 
fore the wind to a broad reach. Many a time we 
had to ‘‘ wear ship” with the old square-rigged 
sloop of war Portsmouth, on which I spent many 
of my youthful days! When wind and tide to¬ 
gether make it impossible to tack the ship, the 
alternative is to let her fall off until dead before 
the wind, and then come up on the other tack, 
“wear ship” it is called by seafaring men. It 
means all hands on the braces, four of them in 
a bundle in your hands, and all the crew pulling 
and hauling on them together as the ship wears. 
In jibing a small boat, if taken unawares and 
you find the boom starting in on her, it can often 
be headed off and the effects much diminished by 
throwing the helm smartly down, that is, the tiller 
towards the sail, thus putting her on a broad 
feach. If she comes over in spite of you, throw 


82 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 

your weight across the boat so as to lift the boom 
high when it gets over on the other side, and grab 
the main sheet so as to ease her over. The thing 
to prevent is the boat dipping so violently as to 
bury the boom in the water, when you no longer 
have control over it and are due for a capsize. 

With jib and mainsail the young skipper’s prob¬ 
lems are much increased, but his rewards are 
greater in a perfectly balanced rig. The tendency 
of the jib is to pull the bow away from the wind; 
that of the mainsail to drive her up into the wind. 
The latter should always have the greater force; 
too big a jib is very dangerous, for, in a hard 
catspaw, it will not let her come up when you spill 
wind out of the mainsail but sets her further 
abeam all the time. The only salvation then is 
to let fly the jib sheet quick. But, with the jib 
and mainsail properly balanced, if you spill your 
wind and shove the helm down she will come up 
into the wind and luff the jib also, and you are 
perfectly safe. Ballast also has a great deal to do 
with it, so that if you find your jib giving her a 
lee helm, shift the ballast further forward until 
you get her well balanced with a slight weather 
helm, that is, a slight tendency to come up into 
the wind, when both mainsail and jib are sheeted 
home close hauled. My boat, the Margaret, was 


CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 83 


so perfectly balanced that she would sail with 
the skipper’s shinbone against the tiller, a mere 
turn of the leg correcting the helm. Moreover, 
in a light wind she would sail herself, with jib and 
mainsail properly set. She would come up, hang 
in stays, fall off, come up again and this time go 
about on the other tack, and keep this up indefi¬ 
nitely, with her skipper lying indolently in the 
bottom of the boat. I was once boarded by some 
anxious fishermen who thought the boat gone 
adrift and sailing herself, with her youthful skip¬ 
per drowned somewhere! 

In coming about with a sloop rig, after the 
familiar hail, “Hard a-lee!” is given by the skip¬ 
per, the helm is put down hard and jib sheet 
slacked off. The boat goes in stays with both jib 
and mainsail luffing, and the jib sheet is still held 
on cleat while the jib fills on the other side, thus 
throwing the bow around. As soon as the main¬ 
sail fills and is sheeted home, the weather jib sheet 
is slacked off and the lee sheet snugged home and 
cleated, and you are “all standing” on the other 
tack. A good sloop ought to get about in seven 
seconds. Always remember that the jib is the 
last sail set and the first sail down, for, if the 
mainsail comes down first, the jib will play 
“Charley Horse” with you until you get it down 


84 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


and furled, for with it up alone you have no con¬ 
trol of the boat whatever. Get the driving power 
of the mainsail on her first, and then up with your 
jib. The only time this rule is broken is when 
running dead before the wind in such a heavy 
blow that not even a rag of the mainsail can be 
set. Sometimes I have scudded before a storm 
with only the jib set, and made excellent time 
at it too! 

In going dead before the wind the jib might just 
as well come down, as the mainsail and spinnaker 
rob it of all the wind. The boy’s simplest rig for 
a spinnaker that I can suggest would be: spin¬ 
naker boom rigged with slippery jim like a sprit, 
put on the mast just above the first mast ring. 
Boom has spinnaker sheet block on outer end. 
Use topping lift for spinnaker halliard and start 
out in the race with the spinnaker up and in fine 
twine stops along the mast, and spinnaker sheet 
already rove through pole block. The pole is car¬ 
ried lashed alongside of mast, upright. Now 
then; when you round that outer buoy, every sec¬ 
ond counts in getting the spinnaker set, for she 
will jump ahead as soon as she feels it, and if 
the other fellow gets his set first he will catch 
you. A boy at the spinnaker boom sets its end 
in the slippery jim, with guy led aft and sheet led 



CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS St 


around mast to leeward, and at the hail 4 4 Let go 
spinnaker!” he drops pole out, yanks on spin¬ 
naker sheet to break the stop threads, and hauls 
it out flat on the boom, while the skipper is be¬ 
laying the spinnaker guy on a cleat at the stern. 
Set it flat or ballooned out, according to the wind, 
by hauling in or paying out on the spinnaker 
sheet. If you have a balloon jib set also, it will 
pay to balloon the spinnaker out a bit, so that the 
wind spilled from the spinnaker will tumble into 
the balloon jib, giving that sail a little pull also. 

Finally, the art of setting sails. A sail set dead 
flat will not be worth much. Shakespeare proved 
himself an able seaman when he made the line, 
4 4 The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail.’’ 
ideal sail set is the curve of a bird’s wing, or an 
aeroplane plane. It needs a full bag up near the 
luff, and then a nice flat plane aft, so that the 
wind, having done its work in the shoulder of your 
sail, can be passed out aft, dead, without any bags 
or pockets to retain it. For this reason a 4 4 nigger 
heel” jib and ditto clew and peak for the main¬ 
sail are always slow. The wind gets in that 
pointed bag in the sail and stays there, and that 
much of the sail might just as well be cut off 
with the scissors, for all the good it does! A 
slight out-curve or fullness to the leach of the 


80 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


mainsail corrects the ‘ 4 nigger heel” tendency, and 
the same thing on the jib is done by cutting the 
foot, not on a straight line, but with a downward 
curve as you will notice in all the jibs shown in 
these illustrations. To get that desirable fullness 
in the luff, the young skipper will be careful to 
set up his gaff so high as to throw some wrinkles 
in the luff before starting, and also the lacing 
around the boom and gaff are eased off up near 
the luff and drawn taut aft. Finally, see that the 
peak halliard has a good grip, far out towards the 
upper end of the gaff. Otherwise it will sag off to 
leeward and you lose a lot of driving power. 

In two-sail craft like sharpies and decked sail¬ 
ing canoes, a certain balance is again obtained 
by the proportions of the two sails. In this case 
the small sail astern, the mizzen, becomes the 
driver and is your “safety sail.” It should go up 
first instead of the mainsail, for the tendency of 
the mizzen is always to drive the bow of the boat 
or canoe up into the wind —the point of safety. 
Every time you spill wind from the mainsail, your 
mizzen drives her up into the wind; without it 
you would most likely fall off the wind, as the 
mainsail is stepped so far forward, and you would 
be in a bad way indeed! So, set the mizzen and 
keep it trimmed a trifle closer than you are ban- 


CATBOATS AND KNOCKABOUTS 87 


dling the mainsail, thus giving her a weather 
helm. In this way your rudder has a better hold 
on her, aided by the sails, and she will come about 
nicely, even though the boat is long and narrow 
with a long, rather deep, keel. In coming about, 
throw her up into the wind and, after going in 
stays, back the mizzen, that is, reach around and 
hold its boom up to windward, thus using it to 
slew the stern quickly around and allowing the 
mainsail to fill off on the other tack. 

And, do not douse the mizzen in a canoe when 
paddling with the double blade paddle. Theoret¬ 
ically leaving the mizzen up would drag you astern 
because of the constant luffing; practically, the 
wind is constantly shifting a trifle, filling the 
mizzen first on one side and then the other, and 
you can actually feel the drive of it. And, all the 
time, it is holding her head up into the wind so 
that you are not continually paddling on one side 
or another to bring her back into the wind, as 
you have to when having no sail up and paddling 
into a head wind. 

While you will use but three knots constantly, 
the clove hitch (double half hitch), bowline knot 
and square (or reef) knot, there are about 20 
others that you occasionally have use for aboard 
ship. The list of them is given below and the 


88 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


drawings for which I am indebted to Messrs. Chas. 
Durkee are given, loose-tied, on the page opposite 


this. 


1. Bight of a rope. 

2. Simple or overhand knot. 

3. Figure 8 knot. 

4. Double knot. 

5. Boat knot. 

6. Bowline, first step. 

7. Bowline, second step. 

8. Bowline, completed. 

9. Square or reef knot. 

10. Sheet bend or weaver’s knot. 

11. Sheet bend with toggle. 

12. Carrick bend. 

13. Stevedore knot complete. 

14. Stevedore knot commenced. 

15. Slip knot. 


16. Flemish loop. 

17. Chain knot with toggle. 

18. Half-hitch. 

19. Timber-hitch. 

20. Clove-hitch. 

21. Rolling-hitch. 

22. Timber-hitch and half-hitch. 

23. Blackwall-hitch. 

24. Fisherman’s bend. 

25. Round turn and half-hitch. 
20. Wall knot commenced. 

27. Wall knot completed. 

28. Wall knot crown commenced. 

29. Wall knot crown completed. 




KNOTS AND BENDS USED IN SEAMANSHIP 











































CHAPTER TV 


BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 

Boat building for boys is quite a step away 
from chicken house and woodland shack construc¬ 
tion, in that it requires two qualities that are not 
essential in ordinary building—thoroughness and 
exactitude. Things that will “get by” in build¬ 
ing a hen coop, like a crack not tightly made up, 
or a corner not exactly plumb, will never do in 
boat building; but when a boy gets to twelve years 
and older he begins to take pleasure in honest, 
exact work, and will not be satisfied with rough 
and ready constructions, and it is at just about 
this age that he takes great interest in boat build¬ 
ing, boat overhauling, boat rigging and all the 
aquatic sports that go with the ownership of a 
boat. 

As most boys are much shorter in coin than in 
ambition, and as a boat costs but a third as much 
when you build it yourself, the way to own a 
really fine, large craft is to build it yourself, dur¬ 
ing the winter months. To do this you need a few 

tools, but these of the best; for no five-and-ten- 
89 


90 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


cent store articles will do for boat building. You 
need a good cross-cut saw, and ditto ripsaw, each 
of them costing not less than $1.65; a good jack 
plane, costing $2.00; a good hammer, of real steel, 
costing a quarter; a ratchet brace, costing a dol¬ 
lar ; four bits of the twenty-five cent kind; a breast 
drill with small twist drills for boring holes for 
nails (for no real boat carpenter would dream of 
driving a nail without first boring for it—it’s the 
way they so marvellously avoid splitting things); 
a spoke-shave, costing 40 cents; and one chain 
boat clamp, costing $1.50. This latter you can 
hardly get along without, unless you can borrow 
something of the kind from a carpenter, for the 
strains on boat planking are tremendous, and far 
beyond your strength to bend. You often read, 
in boys’ books, of bending twenty-foot planks 14 
inches wide by hand, the writer slurring over the 
details of how you’re going to do it because he 
either does not know himself, or else does not 
realize what he is asking the boy to do. As a mat¬ 
ter of fact your whole weight on such a plank will 
hardly bend it six inches, while it must bend some 
two feet to fit the curves of a boat, and this can 
only be done with a screw clamp. This clamp (Fig. 
10) has a piece of chain attached, and two inter¬ 
changeable hooks, the keel hook and plank hook; 


BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 91 


and you use it either to squeeze the planks edge¬ 
wise against each other before nailing fast, as in 
planking a boat, or use it to draw the planks to 
the frame in wrapping them around the molds. 

Going at it gradually, you can soon accumulate 
this set of tools, and are now ready for lumber. 
The best planking is white cedar, costing about 
7 cents a board foot for clear stock free from 
knots. Next after it comes white pine; and last, 
cypress, which latter, though it will never rot, is 
prone to split, and is heavier than the other two 
woods. For stem, knees, deadwoods, frames, keel, 
etc., the best wood is sound white oak. There is 
no use considering anything else, as you can 
always get it. 

My own boy is now building a 12-foot sailing 
batteau for cruising in Barnegat Bay, and as she 
is almost an exact duplicate of my boat, the Mar¬ 
garet (described in Part One, Chapter I), that I 
had when a boy of his age, we will start by telling 
how to build her. You want, first of all, a good 
oak stem, made from a piece of 4 x 4-inch white 
oak not less than 26 inches long. Most boys make 
the mistake of getting the stem too small, so that 
when they come to cut the rabbet for the %-inch 
side planks there is not enough wood left in the 
stem to nail securely to, and the boat is weak 


92 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


where she ought to be strongest. And you want 
length enough to allow for the forward sheer and 
cutting across the stem at an angle, top and bot¬ 
tom, to match the sheer. Having gotten your 
stem piece, scribe a center line down one side and 
lay out from it two lines, % inch apart, which are 
to be the front edge of your bow. Do not get this 
any sharper, for when you have trimmed it round 
(or maybe put on an iron stem band) you will find 
it not any too wide. Lay off the shape of the stem 
and rabbet on top and bottom of your block of oak, 
as shown in the drawing (Fig. 6), and saw off the 
superfluous wood, or trim it off first with a sharp 
hatchet and finally smoothing flat with your plane. 
Then saw out the rabbet for the planks. It is 
easier to saw this than to chisel it out, as, once 
you get your rip-saw started right she will cut you 
a neat, plane surface that simply needs smoothing 
with the plane. The saw, of course, will slot the 
full length of your stem, cutting a deeper and 
deeper kerf until you get down to the bottom of 
the rabbet. Do not get these rabbet angles the 
wrong way (as shown by the dotted lines). Most 
amateurs make this mistake and the stem is 
ruined, for you then have a great hole in behind 
the side planks that will never calk tight in the 
world! 






BOAT CONSTRUCTION DETAILS 


V< -H .(A .dt\. 







































































































BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 93 


You are now ready for the side planks, the 
lower or garboard pair. Too often boys’ books 
waste the poor boy’s money by telling him to use 
these planks just as they come from the mill (Fig. 
13, how not to cut), yet a little experiment with a 
cardboard miniature plank will show you that the 
only way those planks can bend around the middle 
mold with both edges straight is bolt upright, a 
most unseaworthy and landlubberly way for the 
sides of your boat to be. No; you must have out¬ 
board flare to the planks, and to get this flare 
like a regular boat and yet not have her bottom 
curve up so much as to spin around like a 
wash tub and have no grip on the water, you 
must cut the bottom edge of the garboard 
planks with a long in-curve of some three inches 
rise, as shown in the drawing (Fig. 14). The 
upper edge can stay straight, as that will give her 
just about the right sheer. Cut, also, the stem 
end of the plank at the slant shown and cut up 
the curve for the counter astern as shown, also 
lay off but do not cut the angle for the stern 
transom. Do not bevel the lower plank edge as 
yet. Both garboards are to be finished alike with 
square edges and sawed out with your ripsaw. 
When finished, paint the inside of the rabbet and 
the forward edges of both garboards with thick 


94 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


white lead paste and then tack both planks to the 
stem with wire nails. They will lie out astern at 
a long angle, and, when satisfied that they lie true 
to the rabbet angle, bore four holes in each plank 
with your breast drill and drive in 2-inch 10-penny 
galvanized iron clout nails, setting them in below 
the surface of the planks to allow for putty above 
the nail heads. 

You are now ready for the center mold. Sup¬ 
pose you have chosen fourteen feet for the length 
of your boat. Planks come in merchant sizes of 
10, 12,14, 16 and 18 feet, with rarely some 20-foot 
sizes to be picked up. You will then choose four¬ 
teen-foot planks for the garboard and sheer strake 
12 and 8 inches wide respectively, one each for 
each side. Tack the sheer strake to the stem, 
lapping the garboard one inch, and then lay out 
on the planks the angle of the stern transom, 
measuring down from near the upper corner of 
the sheer strake (about an inch from the end of 
the plank to allow something over for the bend of 
the plank), and you will then have the right 
length for the garboard plank, and this should be 
done before sawing it. If the boat is to be about 
fourteen feet long (she will come a little less when 
the planks are bent) the right beam will be 4 feet 
6 inches, and the flare on each side to throw back 


BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 95 


the waves will be 6 inches, making the bottom 
3 feet 6 inches wide. 

Now for the height amidships; the garboard 
plank as it came from the lumber yard was 12 
inches wide, of which 3 inches was taken out amid¬ 
ships by the rise of the bottom curve. This 
leaves 9 inches for the garboard width amid¬ 
ships. The top or sheer strake will be an 8-inch 
board, and will lap the garboard one inch, so that 
the total depth of the side amidships will be 16 
inches. Get a rough 10-inch board and saw from 
it two pieces about 4 feet 8 inches long, cleat them 
together, making one wide mold some 18 inches 
high by 4 feet 8 inches long, and lay out on this 
the lines of the center mold as shown in Fig. 5, 
with a 3-foot 6-inch bottom, 6-inch flare, 16-inch 
sides and 4-foot 6-inch top. Cut out a % x 9-inch 
notch on each side for the garboard, making the 
actual width of the mold bottom 3 feet 4^ inches 
inside, allowing % inch for the lap of sheer strake 
on garboard strake. 

Now you are ready to put in the mold and bend 
the garboard planks around it. The mold does 
not go in the center, but, to get a pretty sailing 
shape, it is put 6 feet from the bow and a little 
less than 8 feet from the stern. Now to bend 
the planks: Put on your chain clamp, with the 


96 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


plank hook bearing against a cleat tacked on out¬ 
side the after edge of the strake and its screw foot 
bearing on a similar cleat on the opposite after 
edge. By main strength you can bring the planks 
together maybe a foot or more around the central 
mold as brace, and then you catch the chain in the 
right link to hold what you have gotten. Next, 
screw in on the clamp, drawing the plank ends 
together until they are the right width to fit in the 
stern transom. This is made of oak, % by 12 
inches wide and is cut, shaped very like the cen¬ 
tral mold, with the same flare angles but narrower. 
For a fourteen-foot batteau your stern seat would 
need to be about 3 feet wide at the top and 2 feet 
3 inches at the bottom; allowing for a %-inch 
notch on each side for the garboard plank, it 
makes the actual bottom dimension of the tran¬ 
som 2 feet iy 4 inches, and, as the sheer strakes 
will take 7 inches of the transom, this notch for 
the garboards wall only be 5 inches high. (The 
actual distance you take off the transom cut of the 
garboard planks.) This gives very little to nail to, 
and certainly not enough to hold the planks if you 
take off the clamp. However, bore for two clout 
nails and drive them home through the garboard 
strakes into the ends of the transom, and tack a 
board across the bottom with nails driven into the 


BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 97 

garboards on the turn of the counter. Then work 
in two oak corner knees, 6 inches on a side, to fit 
snugly in the corners between the inside of the 
garboards and the inside of the transom. These 
are secured by two No. 14 brass screws 2y 2 inches 
long, driven through the outside of the garboard, 
and two more driven through the outside of the 
transom. These knees are very important, for 
strength in securing the garboards to the tran¬ 
som. Even now you dare not take off the clamp, 
but must first secure the garboards by nailing 
on all the bottom planking, with the clamp still on 
the transom. 

Turn the boat over and “spot” the garboard 
plank edges for bevelling (Fig. 8). To do this, 
take a. strip of wood 2x1 inches, perfectly true 
and straight, and lay it across the bottom of the 
boat at various places, marking down from it the 
outside of the garboard the correct distance that 
its inside edge is below the under surface of your 
strip. Run a thin batten through all these points, 
and scribe a line, which will be the bevel line to 
plane to. Finish smooth and true with your plane, 
and then put on your bottom planks, beginning 
at the transom. The plank furthest aft overlaps 
the transom and nails to it, so the latter must be 
bevelled to match. When you get forward to the 


98 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


small planks up at the bow, it is time to stop and 
put in the keelson, in which I am a great believer, 
for the additional strength it gives, besides keep¬ 
ing the bottom planks from springing (though 
plenty of small rowboats have been built with¬ 
out keel or keelson). However, we will put one 
in our boat, as she is to be an able deep-sea 
cruiser. Get it out of %-inch yellow pine, dressed, 
6 inches wide and 14 feet long; and the cheapest 
thing to do is to pick out a nice 12-inch board at 
the mill and have them rip it in half for you, get¬ 
ting thus keel and keelson at the same time. The 
keelson goes inside the boat, from stem to tran¬ 
som, and is bent to fit snug along the bottom. 
Each plank is nailed to it with four 8-penny gal¬ 
vanized clout nails, driven through from the bot¬ 
tom and clinched (first boring for them with the 
breast drill) and setting the heads in to take putty. 
The keelson will bend up the counter easily if you 
begin nailing at the bow end first and cross-cut it 
half through every inch where the turn of the 
counter begins to get bad. An oak knee is worked 
in from keelson to transom, thus strengthening 
the latter. 

All the bottom plank nails are 10-penny gal¬ 
vanized, driven down into the garboard edges, 
three to the plank and set to take putty. When .all 


BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 99 

of the plank ends have been trimmed off with the 
cross-cut saw and the rough ends planed smooth, 
you are ready for the sheer strake planks, which 
are now to be nailed to the stem the same as the 
garboards. But, as they must come in flush, to 
fit into the rabbet, so you must first cut a bevel on 
the tops of garboards, beginning about 16 inches 
back from the stem; and cut a corresponding 
bevel on the bottoms of the sheer strakes. In 
order not to get a thin shim edge that will not calk 
well, cut this bevel wdth a notch, as shown in 
Fig. 11. Having fitted them, nail fast to the 
stem and wrap the planks around the mold, over¬ 
lapping the garboards an inch. Nail with 8-penny 
galvanized iron clout nails every three inches, bor¬ 
ing for each to avoid splitting the edges of your 
planks, driving the nails from outside and clinch¬ 
ing inside on the garboard. It takes two boys to 
do this, one holding an axehead against the spot 
where the nail will come through. 

When you get aft nearly to the transom it will 
be time to take off the clamp (which was on the 
garboards all this time) and you had best secure 
them by tacking a few strips across the top of 
the boat, here and there, and wrapping a rope 
around the boat near the stern, tightening it by 
driving a wedge in between the boat bottom and 


100 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


the rope. I once ruined a nearly finished batteau 
by taking the clamps off at this time without 
proper security. It was a single-plank, ten-foot 
dinghy, and the strains in bending the planks 
were very severe. After nailing on the bottom 
boards and transom, I took off the clamps without 
putting in the corner knees, and while working 
at them there was a sudden rending crash, and 
the whole boat flew apart in a second. The side 
planks tore loose from transom and bottom 
planks, great strips of wood being torn off the 
bottom of the side planks, and the only thing to do 
was to cut up those side planks until I got to 
good sound wood again, a loss of about two inches 
in depth of the sides. It is a classic accident; 
one that will happen to all youthful boat builders 
unless warned. 

However, we have got to get off our clamp from 
the garboards, to wrap in the sheer strakes, so 
we will do it now, putting the clamp on as soon as 
possible and drawing the sheer strake planks in 
until they lie flat against the garboards and are 
snug to the transom. Then drive and clinch the 
lap nails aft to the stern, drive in nails through 
sheer strake into the transom, and work in two 
more oak corner knees flush with the gunwale. 
Then trim off with a saw any overhang of the 


BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 101 


sheer strakes (which should be left long enough 
for the purpose). 

Next, put in the sill for the stern seat. It is a 

piece of % x 4-inch oak, and is fitted in on edge 

about 24 inches forward of the transom, securing 

with two screws, one each side, driven through 

from the outside. It should come about six inches 

below the gunwale and should notch to fit over the 

tops of the garboard strakes. When this is in you 

can safely take off the clamp for good, and can 

handle the boat without fear. Turn her over and 

put on the keel, first trimming off the surplus 

stem true with the top sheer and bottom rocker. 

The keel is to go under the stem and have a large 

screw driven through it up into the stem. But, 

before this is done, all the bottom planks must be 

calked or you will not be able to get at the seams 

under the keel. Calking takes three operations: 

(1) opening the seam with a calking tool (the 

No. 0 is right for small boats); (2) calking the 

seam with cotton, sold for the purpose in balls of 

wicking; (3) “paying” the seam, as painting over 

the cotton is called, and puttying over the paint. 

It is quite a job, but when done the keel can go 

on and is best secured to the bottom with No. 12 

brass flat-head screws, countersunk to take putty 

over their heads. Slot the keel back four feet 
✓ 


102 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


from the stern, with two saw cuts an inch apart, 
leaving a central tongue which you will spring up 
over the skeg. Now screw fast these two keel 
sides under the counter, trimming off at the tran¬ 
som. Next, fit the skeg. It will be about eight 
inches deep, as you can find out exactly by bend¬ 
ing the tongue of the keel until it comes in true 
line with the bottom. Hold an eight-inch board 
with its edge touching the bottom of the boat, the 
board being exactly in the line of the keel. Now 
scribe from the bottom with a stick 8 inches long 
and having a pencil on the end of it, making a 
curve on the board parallel to the curve of the 
bottom, or ‘ 1 counter ’’ as it is called at this point. 
Saw out with your rip, and you have the skeg, 
which can then be driven in snug under the keel 
tongue, fitting tight in the slot between the keel 
strips up under the counter. Trim off at the tran¬ 
som and put on the stern post, made of 2 x %-inch 
oak, screwed to the back of the transom with 
2-inch brass No. 14 screws, also driving them 
through the post into the skeg. Finish the job 
by driving screws down through the keel strip into 
the skeg and also from the inside of the boat 
through the bottom planks into the skeg. 

We are now ready to take out the central mold. 
Before doing it, its place must be taken with some- 


BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 103 


thing equally strong, and that is the central row¬ 
ing thwart. This goes in just aft of the mold, 
and you first get out two side braces of % x 8-inch 
yellow pine, 16 inches long, and tack to each of 
them a block 8 x 8 x % inches to take care of the 
lap of garboard and sheer strake planks. These 
side boards are secured by brass screws driven 
through from the outside, and then the thwart is 
cut, of 8 x %-inch yellow pine, and set in to come 
about 8 inches above the bottom of the boat. It 
should drive snug, so as to spread the boat a trifle 
and free the central mold. Take this out, and 
the boat is nearly done. Get two yellow pine 
1%-inch half-round pieces of molding, 14 feet 
long, to be bent later around the gunwale over the 
wash board cracks for fenderwales. Work in an 
oak breast-hook in the bow, just aft of the stem 
and fitting snugly to it. Two oak knees to the 
rowing thwart, and the boat is done, as a row¬ 
boat, barring the stern seat, which can be fitted in, 
in white pine, left-over, bottom planks. 

But we want a sail batteau of her, with deck, 
washboards and centerboard. Put in the center- 
board first. The construction I have shown in Figs. 
1, 2 and 3 is the easiest to make and put in. The 
sides of the trunk are 12 x %-inch white pine, 30 
inches long, and are secured to the posts with 


104 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


brass screws, some lamp wicking and white lead 
paste being run along between the posts and trunk 
boards, not only to make it tight but to make it a 
trifle wider, so that a %-inch yellow pine center- 
board can swing freely inside. Saw this center- 
board out, building it up of 4 x %-inch yellow pine 
strips, strung on two %-inch iron rods by drilling 
holes for the purpose, and finally planing the 
whole thing flat and true. About 26 inches long, 
12 inches deep at forward end and 16 inches aft is 
about right for this board. Swing with a white 
pine plug, driven through both sides of the center- 
board trunk and passing through an inch hole in 
the lower forward corner of the board. The 
posts must be long enough to go through keelson, 
bottom boards and keel “and then some”; say, 
3 y 2 inches longer than the height of the trunk. 
Slot through the keel, keelson and bottom boards 
with compass and rip-saw, calk all the seams in¬ 
side with a hook calking iron, and then lay lamp- 
wicking soaked in white lead paste around the 
slot, set in the posts and trunk and draw down 
tight with long, 4-inch No. 16 brass screws, driven 
up through keel, bottom boards and keelson, into 
the bottom of the centerboard trunk planks. 

To put on the deck you first want a set of deck 
carlines, spaced about eight inches. These are of 


BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 105 


2 x %-inch oak, and are planed with a slight crown 
on the tops. Secure by toe-nailing to the sides 
on top of a “ riser’’ strip, run around two inches 
below the gunwales, inside on the sheer strake. 
The first thing to go on these carlines is the plank- 
sheer, which continues aft to form the washboards. 
Four inches wide is plenty, and it must be gotten 
out in two pieces to a side. By stretching a string 
across, from the stem to a point on the gunwale 
about 6 feet 6 inches aft from the stem, you will 
find a place where the height of the curve from 
stem to this point and from inside corner of tran¬ 
som and sheer strake to the same point will be 
the same height, 4 inches. As you want the plank- 
sheer to be four inches wide, it is obvious that 
such a curved plank can be cut from a board eight 
inches wide, but six feet long for the plank-sheer 
and eight feet for the washboard. Lay one of 
the 6-foot boards down on the deck with its outer 
edge just touching the gunwale about 3 feet 3 
inches from the bow. Then scribe the outline of 
the gunwale on the under side of the plank, and 
batten a parallel line four inches away from it, 
which second line will just end inside your plank 
corners. Do the same thing with the 8-foot plank, 
laying it on the gunwale just touching at a point 
4 feet from the stern, and scribe your line. Run 


106 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


a second parallel line four inches from it, and 
saw out both planks. They will meet end to end 
over a block placed a foot aft of the carline 
which forms the nail strip for the front cockpit 
coaming, which latter crosses the boat five feet 
aft of the bow. Make the port side plank-sheer 
and washboard precisely as described for the star¬ 
board side, and meet the two plank-sheers on the 
breast-hook, laying one on top of the other and 
sawing a neat cut down the centerline of the boat 
to bring them snugly together. Nail them to 
breasthook, carlines and gunwales. The wash¬ 
boards will need little triangular blocks under 
them at intervals of about 18 inches along the 
inside of the gunwale, these blocks being 4 x 4-inch 
triangles, gotten out of %-inch pine, and fitted 
snug to sheer strake and under side of wash¬ 
boards. 

The cockpit coaming goes on next. About 
twenty feet of 4 x %-inch oak will do, and it should 
be molded half-round on the upper edge. Run 
this across the front of your cockpit, nailing to 
the carline, and around the inside of your wash¬ 
boards, letting it hang down maybe % inch below 
the under side of the washboards. 

They are called by this peculiar name, you will 
find out as soon as you begin to sail, because these 


BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 107 

boards are awasb most of the time when tacking. 
Without them you cannot sail much in a stiff 
breeze, because the water will always be coming 
over the gunwale, but with them you can “roll 
her down good. ,, 

The next thing to go on is the king plank, or 
“mast partner , 1J as it is called in larger boats, be¬ 
cause there are two of them for large masts, each 
cut out half-round to pass a big mast. With a 
small boat like ours a single 6-inch yellow pine 
%-inch dressed plank, five feet long, suffices, and 
you nail it fore and aft, fitting snugly into the 
angle between the plank-sheers, resting on the 
breast-hook, and fitting snug against the cockpit 
coaming aft. It is nailed to all the carlines, and 
you then have left two triangles to fill on the deck, 
in between the plank-sheers, the king plank, and 
the forward edge of the cockpit coaming. Fill these 
with narrow 2-inch strips of %-inch white pine, 
nailing each strip to the carlines, and then calk 
the whole thing, every seam in the deck, for it is 
just as important to have your deck tight as your 
bottom. Next wrap around your half-round fen- 
derwales, covering the crack between washboards 
and gunwales, and then make your bowsprit, 
working it out of a piece of 2-inch square spruce, 
six feet long, and let it stick out three feet beyond 


108 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


the bow. Bolt to king plank with %-inch galvan¬ 
ized iron through bolts. Add a wire bobstay and 
a galvanized iron, two-ring withe (Fig. 9), over 
the end of the bowsprit; put your oarlocks in their 
proper places on the washboards; put in rudder 
gudgeons; main and peak halliard cleats on the 
cockpit for’d coaming; two jib sheet cleats on the 
inside of the sheer strake, aft, just in front of 
the stern seat; a main sheet cleat on the inside of 
the transom; jib downhaul and halliard cleats on 
the for’d cockpit coaming; centerboard cleat on 
the centerboard trunk; a chain plate to port and 
starboard, six inches aft of the mast hole on the 
outside of the sheer strakes; and you are ready 
to rig her, for details of which see Part One, Chap¬ 
ter I. A word about the lower mast step. This is 
one of the most strained blocks in the boat and 
must be put on with four heavy screws, well sunk 
into the keelson. Two screws will not do, as the 
mast will surely split the step in half. To get the 
position of the step wait until your mast is in, 
when you can find it by eye. The mast should rake 
back about 6 inches, coming forward maybe three 
inches when you set taut on the wire rope jib stay. 

A more complicated boat to build than the bat- 
teau is the dory. Except that it has a set of 
frames, around which the strakes are wrapped, 
















































BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 109 


its details of construction are much the same as 
with the batteau. Yon have the flat bottom to 
begin with, only this time the planks run fore and 
aft, and on these the frames, stem and transom are 
first set np, after which the planks are wrapped as 
described in Part One, Chapter II. When we 
come to the clinker built boats we are getting into 
real fine work and yon have hard garboard planks 
to fit to a rabbet in both keel and stem. The plank¬ 
ing is beveled and secured to the ribs as shown in 
Fig. 12. To build such a boat as the various skiffs 
shown in our chapter on catboats and knockabouts, 
you first set up keel or bottom plank and then on 
them the stem and stern transom, secured by dead- 
woods and the stern knee. Molds taken from the 
designer’s lines are next set up at equal stations 
along the keel or bottom plank, and the garboard 
and upper strakes are put on around these molds, 
usually working both ways from garboard up and 
from sheerstrake down, so as not to come out 
w r ith a lumpy, uneven sheerstrake. After this the 
ribs are steamed and shoved down inside the boat 
until they touch the planks equally all around. 
These ribs are very small and numerous, about 
% x 1^4 inches wide being right for quite a large 
skiff. When all are in place and secured, the 
keelson is bolted over the ribs where they cross 


110 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


and all the thwarts are put in and kneed to the 
ribs, and the clamp (as the oak strip that runs 
along inside the gunwale is called) is riveted 
through all the rib heads to the sheer strake. The 
molds are then knocked out and the boat is ready 
for paint. In still larger boats, carvel built, that 
is, with planks nailed to the ribs and abutting 
against each other so that the skin is a flush sur¬ 
face, the keel, stem, stern hook and transom are 
first set up and spiked to all the deadwoods with 
drift bolts. Next the rabbet is cut, and, as the 
angle of it constantly changes, the 4 ‘bearding line” 
or inner line of the rabbet must be found from the 
plans and the rabbet chiselled true at various 
spots, when it can be cleaned out fair and true 
joining these spots, and it will then fit the gar- 
boards when they are put on. Next all the ribs or 
“frames” are bent to agree more or less with the 
set of molds taken from the plans. These molds 
are spaced from two to three feet along the keel 
and battens are run around them from stem to 
stern to get the fair lines of the model. The ribs 
are then put in and faired up, also bevelled to lie 
flat against the future planks, fore and aft, and 
then their floor timbers are nailed to both ribs 
and keel. This holds them firm in their shape, in 
addition to which battens are tacked across each 



I 

I 



FRAMING DESIGNS FOR AN 18 FT. SAIL DORY 


Courtesy "Yachting.” 


-/W- 



































BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 111 


pair of ribs and across the bend of each rib, so 
that it will hold its shape until the planks are on. 
In large boats every third rib is sawed out true 
to the next mold, which is taken from the lines. 
This gives additional stiffness, as this third rib is 
always of much larger stock, say 2x3 inches for a 
30-foot boat, and they further hold the model true, 
since they agree with the molds. The two most 
important planks are then put on—the garboards 
and sheer strakes. To fit the garboards a spiling 
is taken of the line it must make to fit into the 
stem and keel rabbet. This is always a peculiar 
wavy line, when the plank is out flat, and, as it 
must fit snugly, the only way to find it is to tack 
on a flat batten, called the spiling, which roughly 
fits the line of the rabbet. The exact fit is then 
scribed on it by a marker and pencil, the marker 
always touching the edge of the rabbet line and 
thus transferring its contour to the spiling bat¬ 
ten. Cutting this line out on the batten and lay¬ 
ing it on the garboard planks you mark the bot¬ 
tom lines of each of them. To get the top lines, 
each rib is divided into as many divisions as there 
are to be planks, the narrower planks being at the 
round turn of the bilge, and these distances are 
laid off on the garboard plank up from the rabbet 
line along each rib line as drawn out on the gar- 


112 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


board plank. A batten is run through these points 
and getting at this line with your rip-saw you 
have the outline of the most important plank and 
the hardest to fit. Take time and get it on right, 
for a leaky garboard means a leaky boat for the 
whole of her life. To get these carvel-built planks 
on snugly, the chain clamp is brought into play, 
sometimes hooked over the keel to draw a plank 
snug against its lower neighbor, sometimes hooked 
over the sheer strake (or taffrail if same is al¬ 
ready on) to hold a plank tight against its upper 
neighbor while the holes are being drilled for the 
nails or the rivets driven through planks and ribs. 
Each plank, where it passes a rib, should be hol¬ 
lowed out slightly with an adze, and the edges of 
the planks are not cut square but bevelled slightly 
to open about 1/16 inch on the outer seam (Fig. 
7), so that you can calk the wedge-shaped crack 
thus formed, and when she swells shut she will 
crush the inner edges of the planks tight. A boat 
perfectly planked, with edges meeting square, 
would simply burst herself when she went over¬ 
board, for there would be no room for all the 
planks to move in when they swelled under the 
influence of the water. 

In order not to add up any errors in building 
up a planked boat edge to edge, ship carpenters 


BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 113 


always stop planking at about the fifth plank up 
from the garboard and begin planking down from 
the sheer strakes. The final plank is apt to be very 
irregular in shape, but is not noticeable if it occurs 
on the side of the ship, while it would be painful 
to see if up just under the sheer strake. Further 
and more elaborate details of how to plank a large 
carvel-built boat are given in our chapter on 
building a power cruiser. 

You will note that making molds or frames from 
plans is an essential feature of boat building. The 
11 lines/’ as they are called, of many of the boats 
in this book are given in the illustrations, and 
you can build the boat from them. Enlarge to the 
size you have selected. This is best done with an 
architect’s rule giving you choice of scales from 
3/32 inch = 1 foot up to 3 inches = 1 foot. Lay 
off the lines on coarse building paper, full size, 
both body plan and sheer plan. The reason for 
this is that your lines as enlarged from the body 
plan will never agree with the lines as enlarged 
from the sheer plan, but will be out from y 4 to % 
inch, due to errors in enlargement, and you must 
correct these errors until both sets of lines agree, 
and yet sweep fair curves with no wriggles or 
dog’s-tails in them. Then, when you make molds 
from your enlarged and corrected full-size body 


114 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


plans, they will be true and the planks when put 
on them will run in fair sweeps, with no flats and 
hollows. 

For boys around eighteen to twenty years old 
it is not hard to lay out a knockabout from our 
plans and build her complete. None of the tim¬ 
bers are very large, and the construction is, in 
general, simple. A centerboard modification of 
the accepted deep-keel type is more agreeable to 
the youth’s pocketbook, for a lead or even an iron 
keel is not to be thought of for persons of ordi¬ 
nary means. But sand or gravel ballast is cheap, 
and simply requires the manufacture of a dozen 
10-ounce duck canvas bags, about 30 inches long 
by 18 inches wide, which will each hold a hundred 
pounds of beach stones, to be picked up for noth¬ 
ing on any beach along our shores. These are 
stowed in the bilges, and you then have a ballast 
that will insure stability. The rest is a matter of 
a few hundred dollars for lumber and hardware, 
and you have a racing boat which would cost some 
$2,000 at the shipyards. 

And, in all boat construction, do not overlook 
the knockdown frame idea. It saves a mountain 
of hard labor and insures a hull that will be true 
to design. Buy the frame, knocked down but 
fitted, and buy the plank patterns. Lay out the 






BOAT BUILDING FOR BOYS 115 

latter on your plank stock and have your planking 
sawed at a band saw, and the whole job will cost 
but a couple of dollars, whereas if you rip them 
yourself, not only is it a back-breaking job, but 
you are sure to spoil more than two dollars ’ worth 
of planks in mistakes and slips. Calking, paying 
and puttying seams, fitting the planks, nailing 
them fast and countersinking and upsetting rivets, 
planing the skin of your ship to a fine smooth 
surface that will take paint without showing tool 
marks, sandpapering the whole thing to a fine 
polish,—all these are long-winded jobs, and quite 
enough for a gang of youths to undertake with a 
large boat. With a small one all these are but 
details and the main building operations are not 
overlong in time. Even a couple of twelve-year- 
olds can make a good job of a batteau; and older 
boys around fifteen years of age can make a 
sharpie which is a batteau some twenty feet in 
length with flat or else skipjack dead-rise bot¬ 
tom; or they can tackle a 17-foot sail dory. 
Around seventeen years a boy has proficiency and 
honesty enough to try a lap-strake skiff or catboat. 
By honesty I mean intolerance of any faulty work, 
and nerve enough to scrap spoiled work instead 
of trying to make it go in the boat, where it will 
worry you from that time on. A boy that is hon- 



116 SAILING AND BOAT BUILDING 


est enough with himself to take the consequences 
of his mistakes in measurements and carpentry 
and not try to foist them off on his boat, has 
learned one of the great lessons of life. He’ll 
do to trust with a man’s job, as soon as he knows 
enough! 


PART TWO: CANOEING AND CRUISING 









PART TWO: CANOEING AND CRUISING 
CHAPTER I 


HOW TO RIG AND HANDLE AN OPEN CANOE 

Probably of all craft the open paddling canoe 
gives the most sport, the greatest change of scene, 
and the most ease of woods travel with the least 
effort. Compared with rowing a boat, riding 
horseback or back packing through the forest 
trails, the canoe is paradise, as the work of pad¬ 
dling is so divided among the muscles of the whole 
body as to make none of them ache, and one sits 
down comfortably, not with bumping seat and 
strained knees as on horseback. A down-stream 
canoe trip, particularly on a wild river where 
there is plenty of fish and game and one camps 
nightly along the banks, is one of the most enjoy¬ 
able outings a boy can take, and none of it is too 
hard work for the unformed muscles of youth. 

Wherefore, owning a canoe is the ambition of 
every boy living within reach of lake, stream or 
bay. Nowadays they are very cheap—as boats 

go—a good canvas canoe, staunchly built, canvas 
119 



120 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


covered over wooden sheathing, being had from 
such a concern as the Detroit Boat Co. for as little 
as $20. One of the best canoes in the world, the 
White guided model, is only $28, and the extra¬ 
well-built canoes of the Morris company cost 
around $40, so the youth from twelve to twenty 
has a wide range of choice in the quality pur¬ 
chasable. 

I should not advise trying to build such a canoe. 
Later on in these chapters I will tell you how to 
build a decked sailing canvas canoe over a spruce 
and ash frame. I have built four of these canoes, 
my first offense being at the age of twelve, and 
they all cost about $7 for material alone, so that 
the material for the much-ribbed and sheathed 
open canvas canoe would run at least $14 and one 
will get a better boat for $20 than could possibly 
be built by an amateur. 

In choosing a canoe the first question comes up, 
shall we have a keel or not? This has been argued 
pro and con by many an experienced woods voy- 
ageur. The keel adds staunchness but increases 
her draft at least an inch, so that she may stick 
in getting over a ledge or a down tree while the 
other would slip over. On the other hand the keel¬ 
less canoe will get her canvas badly scraped if the 
ledge is sharp and she touches, and, in lifting over 






CORRECT BEGINNING OF STROKE 

Note boy in stern, and position of his left arm. Boy in bow exemplifies 
wrong position. 



I 


CORRECT FINISH OF STROKE 

Small boy in bow shows incorrect position, with no power. 












THE OPEN CANOE 


121 


trees when heavily loaded, she is apt to buckle or 
“hog-back” amidships. My own Morris, which 
has done over a thousand miles of wilderness 
river travel, has a keel an inch deep, and she bears 
few scars on her bottom, most of them being on 
the turn over the bilge, yet going over dams and 
down trees is her specialty,—I should say at least 
a thousand of the latter have passed under her 
keel first and last! A compromise measure, 
adopted by recent canoeists and suggested by the 
writer, has been to put on a flat strip keel of hard 
maple about % inch thick and three inches wide, 
which will protect her from scraping yet only 
increase her draft a tiny bit. 

In picking a canoe, the safest and fastest model 
has a quite flat bottom, with a sharp, round turn 
to the bilge. The tippy ones are those deep and 
round on the bottom with no bilge, having no more 
stability than a barrel. The flat bottom draws but 
little water, slides over the stream like a duck, 
and it makes her a prime sailer because she is so 
staunch. The dimensions of my own canoe, a 
faster canoe by hours than many another model 
which she has raced down stream, are: length, 16 
feet; beam, 33 inches; depth amidships, 12 inches; 
depth bow and stern, 24 inches; width of compara¬ 
tively flat bottom, 24 inches. The cheaper type 




122 CANOEING AND CRUISING 

$20 canoe, one of which is owned by my boys, has 
the following dimensions: length, 15 feet 6 inches; 
beam, 31 inches; depth amidships, 12y 2 inches; 
depth, bow and stern, 22 inches; width of compara¬ 
tively flat bottom, 16 inches. This latter canoe is 
much more tottly than mine, hard to sail and 
nowhere near so staunchly built. Both canoes 
w r eigh about 60 pounds. 

Having purchased the canoe, the first thing to 
learn is how to paddle her. The sign of the novice 
is his reaching far ahead for his water. Do not 
let yourself do that; you have no leverage there, 
most of your strength is to be put in as the left 
wrist passes your left hip, the while your right 
hand is sweeping the top of the paddle forward. 
This will put your shoulder and body into it and 
the motion can be kept up all day without fatigue. 
If paddling with another fellow in the bow, the 
stern boy is always captain, and he is to correct 
with a turn of his paddle any deviation from the 
true course during each stroke. Your mate may 
be weaker than you, and the canoe then tends to 
swing towards his paddle side, which is gener¬ 
ally opposite to yours. In that case, correct him 
at the end of each of your strokes with a turn 
of the paddle. If paddling alone it makes a vast 
difference where you sit as to how the canoe be- 





THE OPEN CANOE 


123 


haves. Abandon the rear seat and find a place 
kneeling somewhere just forward of the rear cross 
brace. Here you can paddle on one side indefi¬ 
nitely, holding the paddle blade at a slight angle 
inwards from straight across. If you find that the 
canoe tends to sheer away from course opposite 
from the side where you are paddling, move a bit 
further forward and alter the angle of your pad¬ 
dle slightly until you get her balanced just right. 
It is the only way to win a race, for the time lost 
in correcting your course at each stroke, as you 
would have to do sitting in the rear seat, will lose 
you out every time. 

River paddling, especially in rapid white water, 
is full of kinks which you have to know and use 
instantly. If the bow man, never embarrass the 
stern man by striking at rocks, etc., with your 
paddle. You will do no good whatever, and may 
upset the canoe. The water always takes care of 
the bow, the stern is the thing to be swung clear 
with the paddle. You report “Rock ahead!” and 
be sure that he sees it, and then leave it to him. 
His stunt is to back paddle the stern of the canoe 
away from the position of the obstruction when 
the current will swing the bow, as it is flowing 
faster than the canoe is going. The bow man's 
hard work comes going around bends. The river 



124 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


tends to swing the canoe into the main eddies 
and your aim is to keep out of them, cutting across 
in the still water. If you want hard work going 
down stream just let the canoe stay indefinitely 
in the deepest and fiercest waters! And so the 
bow man must anticipate the river each time and 
get his bow headed out of the eddies and into 
the quiet part of the bends, as here the stern man 
can aid but little. As soon as the bow is right 
the stern man puts in his strength and shoves her 
ahead across the head of the bend. Never back 
paddle at these times, you lose all your steerage 
way and put yourself at the mercy of the current. 

Down trees and shallows require instant deci¬ 
sion as to where to take them and agreement at 
the same time between bow and stern as to what 
they are going to do. Don’t argue or fight when 
the river is bearing you swiftly on the obstacle! 
All other things being equal, the stern paddle has 
the say. There is usually a hole around one end 
or the other of the tree through which the canoe 
can be snaked. Occasionally it is advisable to 
cross the stream without going either up or down, 
and to do this, bow back-paddles lightly and stern 
paddles forward heavily, which will have the effect 
of holding the canoe stationary at a slant upward 



THE OPEN CANOE 125 

to the stream. The current will then take her 
across. 

In approaching a down tree which cannot be 
gotten around, back her and let her swing about 
gently until broadside to the stream alongside the 
log. Pull out the heaviest duffle and set on log. 
One boy stands on the log on either side of the 
canoe, and between them she is slid over. Most 
of the duffle can be left aboard. In rocky waters, 
go ahead and looked over the rapids before ven¬ 
turing out, for once started there is no turning 
back. More than once you will need to have the 
courage to be a coward,—for it takes a brave boy 
to say “No!” when an inexperienced crowd want 
to run a rapids that better men than any of them 
have portaged around. If there is a portage trail 
it is a pretty fair sign that most canoeists go 
around instead of shooting the rapids. Look for 
a landing, apparently much used, or a blazed tree, 
or tin can on a sapling. If you have decided to 
run, see that all duffle is lashed securely and go to 
it, the stern man being the responsible one. As the 
current splits over rocks it forms a cushion which 
will float your bow away if the stern man but 
guides it in the current and takes care to keep his 
stern clear. Keep where there is plenty of cur¬ 
rent and water, but avoid the main bend, if pos- 



126 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


sible, particularly if there are many rocks. Back 
paddle and let her come down easy at all points 
of danger. 

The stern paddle should be heavy, of hard 
maple and copper shod, five feet long, 28-inch 
blade, 6% inches wide. The bow paddle is lighter, 
of spruce, five feet long, 26-inch blade, 5% inches 
wide. If upset in a rapids, hang to the canoe 
and let the paddles go; you can find them some¬ 
where in an eddy down stream later, but to swim 
after them in rough water is folly. One man takes 
the bow and the other the stern, and you work 
her ashore as soon as possible, build a conflagra¬ 
tion and dry out everything. In traversing, i.e., 
crossing, a lake or bay, look carefully at your 
whitecaps first, or indications of wind if the water 
is calm. A canoe lightly loaded will live in an 
incredible sea; heavily loaded she becomes logy 
and a death trap. Once in November I came spin¬ 
ning down the Metedeconk River with seven miles 
of white water behind me in which even a heavy 
25-foot launch made desperate weather. I had my 
boy and a chum along and all our duffle, but one 
look at the whitecaps made me decide on a back¬ 
packing expedition for them along shore, while I 
took the canoe alone. I left 50 pounds of duffle in 
her and started down wind for a point three miles 




X.ATTEEN RIO FOR OPEN CANVAS CANOE 

This Is as much sail as this type of canoe can stand. 



“shoving” the water out 

Canoe is being bailed out by alternately shoving and pulling, letting 
the momentum of the water carry it out over bow and stern. 








































v. • 








' * 4 





































































































































































THE OPEN CANOE 


127 


away. It was sure a wild ride! The seas were 
three to four feet high, white-capped, and the wind 
so strong that it blew the canoe bodily across the 
waters. Gradually I worked the canoe out abreast 
of the point, but I blew down on it so fast that I 
suddenly realized that I would clear it, if at all, 
only by the most desperate paddling. As it was, I 
ran into the big combers off the point, the second 
one of which picked up the canoe broadside and 
curled her over as if to dash her bottom up on 
the shoals. 

“No you don't!” I gasped, and, shoving hard 
down on the weather gunwale with my elbow, I 
righted her and took the sea aboard. It filled her 
a third full of water, but, before the next comber 
could pour in its cap, I had flown around the point 
and was in the still water under its lee, where 
the boys soon joined me. So, if you must traverse, 
and the seas are high and choppy, better make it 
in two trips lightly loaded than try to do it in one 
and get swamped. When you see a sea about to 
curl aboard, give the canoe a flip so she shows her 
bottom to the wave, when it will go under you and 
all will be well. If any come in and there are 
likely to be more, lay to, and one boy (bow) starts 
bailing. Always have your paddle tied to the 
crossbar by about eight feet of small cotton rope 




128 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


in making a traverse and have the duffle loose. If 
swamped or upset, hang to your paddle and regain 
the canoe, for it’s a drowning matter if she gets 
away from you. 

In reasonably still waters one boy alone can bail 
out an upset canoe. There are two good methods, 
rocking it out and shoving it out. In the first, 
swim around to the stern of the canoe and get the 
water inside rocking from side to side so that it 
flops out at each reverse. As soon as enough is 
out to give her a few inches of freeboard get 
aboard over her stern and dash out the rest with 
your hands. “Shoving” the water out also de¬ 
pends on the momentum of a body of water. Swim 
astern, and, grasping the stern breasthook, give 
her a smart pull towards you. The water will 
slop out in a torrent over her bows. Then shove 
away from you with all your strength and the 
water will come rushing aft and slop out over her 
stern. Keep this up until about half emptied, 
when get aboard over her stern and dash out the 
rest with your hands. No boy under sixteen years 
is strong enough to be successful with either of 
these methods, but by lying down in her when 
she is awash the water can be dashed out if you 
are patient and do not try to move about. I do 
not believe that a single man or boy can bail out a 




TO SWING CANOE OVERHEAD 

The canoe is the famous Peterboro wooden canoe used in the Hudson 
Bay country. 



PADDLES LASHED IN POSITION 

Lashed to rear and forward thwarts 
the blades form a yoke which rests 
on the shoulders. 



CARRYING SINGLE 

A yoke makes this much easier; 
cannot be done in a strong wind. 









































































1 aSSI 





























THE OPEN CANOE 


129 


swamped canoe in a heavy blow. Stick to her, 
for she is your only hope, and get overboard all 
the heavy duffle. If the water is not too cold, take 
time to get out some twine or fish line and buoy- 
mark rifles, axes, etc., by lowering them to the bot¬ 
tom and tying a floating duffle bag at the surface 
anchored by the gun. This leaves the canoe free; 
right her and get into her still awash. Watch your 
chance to get water out and do so at every oppor¬ 
tunity. Sooner or later she will drift ashore, and, 
if you feel yourself getting numb, rest your head 
on bow or stern cross brace and keep quiet. If the 
water is cold, act quickly; heave out all duffle, 
right the canoe, get in and bail steadily with your 
hat or any container. You may beat out the waves, 
and at least will keep exercising while you drift 
to the shore. 

But upsets and the like seldom happen more 
than a few times in a lifetime with a staunch 
canoe, most of which are more able than a row¬ 
boat of the same size. The portage is the surest 
preventative of disasters, and how to do it right 
is worth knowing. Two boys, each carrying an 
end of a canoe under their arms, will work much 
harder than one boy alone carrying it properly. 
Even carrying it upside down, with an end over 
each boy’s head is preferable, but the time-hon- 



130 CANOEING AND CRUISING 

ored Hudson Bay method is to lash the paddles 
to the middle and forward thwart braces, the 
blades of the paddles resting on the middle thwart. 
Then, when you turn the canoe over, your head 
will go between the two paddles and the blades 
rest on your shoulders. With a coat or sweater 
bunched up on each shoulder you can carry an or¬ 
dinary 60-pound canoe with ease while the other 
boy packs the duffle. Keep your baggage low in 
weight if you are going to have many portages, 
for double tripping it means three times the time 
and work lost. Suppose you have a two-mile 
portage from one lake to the other. With a single 
trip that is two miles to the lake, launch the canoe 
and on your way; with a double trip you have two 
miles there loaded, two miles back empty, and 
two miles there again loaded—six miles! Ever 
hike six miles along a woods trail, with no load 
at all? I’d rather do that two miles in one lap 
if I had to stop and rest every five minutes! 

CANOE SAILING 

If one has but a moiety of the real Indian spirit 
in him he will have a pronounced aversion to any¬ 
thing even in a remote degree resembling work. 
Paddling a canoe comes under this head; you 
don’t realize this until once under sail in the same 


THE OPEN CANOE 


131 


canoe, where she goes right along like a greased 
eel with no more effort on yonr part than the 
exercise of a little skill and judgment. And, if 
you give her all the sail power she is really capa¬ 
ble of, you will get such exciting hikes, such 
breathless speed, such a glory of existence out of 
that canoe as you never dreamed of. A full-pow¬ 
ered sail canoe is in the same class as regards 
thrills and sport as a game fish or carnivorous big 
game,—any of these will keep your hands full 
mastering their tricks with all the resourcefulness 
at your command. Far be it from me to utter a 
word counter to the delicious memories of day¬ 
long paddles in the open Indian canoe, down 
green-arched rivers, across long whitecapped 
lakes and down rushing streams. But I have 
other memories;—of the open ocean and the 
green-sedged marsh; of wide estuaries and hill- 
rimmed bays, where the decked canvas canoe, 
heeled down to the cockpit coaming under the 
stress of her great white sails, tore and raced 
over and through the long ocean swells,—when 
every black catspaw put you out over the pickle 
with your toes hooked under the opposite coam¬ 
ing and that little witch lay down and shot 
through the whitecaps like a flying fish! And 
these breathless memories far eclipsed the best 


132 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


sport that the Indian canoe affords,—taken 
strictly and solely as canoeing. If you have no 
portaging to do and your river or chain of lakes 
affords reasonable sea-room, I prefer a single sail 
and a pair of lee-boards for the open model canoe. 
Take along a leg-o’-mutton sail, eight feet hoist by 
nine feet along the foot, of American drilling, 
hemmed and provided with grommets every foot 
along the luff. This takes but little space in 
your kit and can be bent to a spruce sapling as a 
mast with plenty good enough results. Spread it 
with a sprit of light spruce or birch which you 
can cut in the woods. She will go right along with 
such a rig, but will make leeway like a floating 
leaf if you have no lee-boards. For canoe voyag¬ 
ing I prefer these of the folding, collapsible type. 

The sail for my Morris, which I have used for 
over four years in lake and bay cruises, has a 
2-inch diameter mast, 6 feet 9 inches long; and a 
lateen rig, 10-foot 2-inch head, and 11-foot 2-inch 
foot, with 10-foot 6-inch leach. The jaw is at¬ 
tached to bring the mast 19 inches from the fore 
peak of the sail. The sail is made of light 4-ounce 
duck canvas and with it she is very fast. The 
mast is stepped with a cross brace, attachable 
with brass hooks and wingnuts, and the foot step 
is screwed stoutly to three ribs, giving the mast 




FRAME PLAN AND SAIL PLAN, DECKED SAILING CANOE “WATERAT IV 
















































































































> 










I 


I 







% 


t 






THE OPEN CANOE 


133 


a very slight rake backwards. The lee-boards for 
this rig are gotten out of inch spruce and are 30 
inches long with a 12 x 20-inch blade. They are 
secured to stout shoes on the ends of the cross 
piece by brass wing nuts passing through holes 
in the shank of the lee-boards. The cross piece is 
1 x 5 x 38 inches long. 

To make your own lee-boards whittle out of 
clear spruce two blades about the size and shape 
of your broad double paddle-blade with square 
stocks 3 by % inches. Get a pair of brass 3-inch 
hinges and cut a length of clear spruce 3 by 1 
inches, a foot longer than the canoe is wide. Lay it 
across the gunwale of your canoe and mark where 
the two shanks of the lee-boards will come to tit 
snug up to the gunwale. Screw on the hinges, fac¬ 
ing inward so that the lee-boards will fold toward 
each other. The length of the lee-board does not 
need to exceed 24 inches, all told, and should fine 
off to a thin edge much as does a broad-blade canoe 
paddle. Having screwed the hinges fast, erect the 
two lee-boards so that they stand upright bringing 
up hard-and-fast on the ends of their own shanks. 
They should then stand a little outward. Get 
two heavy brass hooks, such as are used aboard 
ship for doors and skylight hatches, and screw 
the eye of these hooks onto the back of the pad- 



134 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


die, and the shackle of the book onto your spruce 
cross-rail, letting the hooks come over at about 
45 degrees and planting them so that when each 
hook is snapped into its eye it will hold its lee- 
board upright, firm and solid. To use the board 
set the cross-rail across the canoe with the lee- 
boards in the water on each side of the canoe. The 
cross-rail is lashed to the cockpit coaming by a 
couple of turns of marlin around two cleats 
screwed to either side of the coaming inside, be¬ 
low where the rail will cross, i.e., a little forward 
of amidships. Twelve inches wide by 24 inches 
long is plenty lee-board enough for an ordinary 
16-foot canoe. 

For canvas-decked canoe I have used a number 
of different sails, including leg-o’-mutton and la¬ 
teen, but have finally come to prefer the Canadian 
Club canoe sail, with short stubby mast and long 
gaff cocked up almost vertically. This sail has 
less spar weight than the lateen, practically the 
same weight as the leg-o ’-mutton, and has not the 
bad leach of the latter, because the batten keeps 
it flat and well spread. It is a wonder for quick 
‘reefing as one can lower the gaff, tie the batten 
to the boom at both ends and the middle, and 
hoist away again in less than three minutes. In 
making it, avoid too heavy spars. For a 12-foot 


THE OPEN CANOE 


135 


canoe, the boom and gaff of the mainsail should 
be six feet long, each of 114 -inch clear spruce, 
tapering to % inch at each end. Batten, 1 % x % 
inch 4 feet 10 inches long and mainmast 5 feet 
6 inches long, of 1 %-inch spruce, tapering to % 
inch; material of sail, American drilling. Mizzen 
sail boom and gaff 4 feet each, of 1-inch spruce, 
tapering to % inch, batten 1 x % inch 3 feet 6 
inches long. Hoist of mainsail, 2 feet 6 inches, of 
mizzen, 1 foot 6 inches. You will note from this 
that only two mast rings are needed on the main¬ 
mast and one on the mizzen. To cut out sails the 
easiest scheme is to stake out the dimensions, 
either on a lawn or in a large empty room, and 
run a string around the stakes or tacks, giving the 
outline of the sail. Lay the canvas parallel to 
the leach (rear outer edge of sail), and cut as 
many gores as will be needed, allowing an inch of 
hem. Leave l 1 /*? inches overlap along the line of 
the batten, and when the two parts of the sail are 
done, turn under and sew the overlap, forming a 
sort of pocket 1 % inch wide into which the batten 
can be slipped. Along the head, foot, and luff of 
the sail will be wanted brass %-inch grommets, 
which are little brass eyeholes through which the 
lashing rope is run. These grommets space about 
9 inches, and are easily put in by punching a hole 




136 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


in the hem, slipping in the male half of the grom¬ 
met, putting on the ring and turning over with a 
fid, or, in lieu of any such nautical implement a 
large 20-penny wire nail. To make the spars buy 
the stock from a door-and-sash mill in the rough 
square or rounded if they keep it. They will rip 
it off a clear plank for you for a few cents more 
than the cost of the plank. Work the spars round 
with a jack-plane and a spoke-shave, finish to a 
nice taper each way from the middle (except the 
mast, which tapers from the foot), sandpaper 
and varnish with marine spar varnish. Whittle 
the jaws for the gaff out of natural bend maple 
forks giving them the proper twist so as to 
seize the mast when the gaff is cocked up taut. 
All the running rigging, lashings, reef-points, etc., 
should be of white %-inch cotton rope and the 
blocks (pulleys) of %-inch galvanized iron. The 
main sheet (rope) is single and is held in the hand 
while sailing (it pulls about as hard as a large 
dog). The mizzen sheet is made fast on a cleat 
on the rear deck after trimming true to the wind. 
It should pass through a brass screw-eye on the 
rudder-head, so as to sway clear at each tack. 
The rudder is best managed by a yoke on the head 
of it, with steer lines running flat over the rear 
deck and through screw-eyes along the inside of 





OFF FOR A LONG LAKE AND PORTAGE CRUISE 

No more enjoyable summer vacation exists than a canoe cruise on 
some chain of lakes. 



RIVER CANOE CRUISING 

A stop for a camp is made each night at some spring along the river 
banks. 







t 








THE OPEN CANOE 


137 


the cockpit. The steer rope is endless and taut 
throughout its length. To steer you can grab it 
anywhere, and wherever you leave it the rudder 
will stay. Most of canoe steering is done by sails 
alone. A centerboard can be done without in a 
canvas canoe, as the 3-inch fin keel gives her 
plenty of grip on the water, but an 8 in. x 36 in. 
keel board fastened to the keel with carriage bolts 
and ring nuts as described in Part Two, Chapter 
III, is a great aid. 

A word to the inexperienced as to the value of 
the mizzen or dandy. With it a canoe is far safer 
than with the mainsail alone, because the tendency 
of the dandy is always to shove you up into the 
wind. The minute you spill the wind out of the 
mainsail (too strong a catspaw) the dandy shoves 
you safely up into the wind unless checked by the 
rudder. Without it the canoe would simply knock 
down and probably fall off the wind, thus filling 
the mainsail again just when you don’t want it, 
and, unless you check her immediately with the 
rudder, you are in for very serious trouble in¬ 
deed. With the dandy astern she will be much 
faster, safer and quicker to mind her helm, and 
the only reason I do not advocate it for the open 
Indian canoe is because of the high curling stern 
of the latter. 



CHAPTER n 


CANOE CRUISING FOR BOYS 

There are two kinds of canoe cruises, both of 
them splendid outdoor recreations for boys, the 
lake and river cruise in the open canoe, with the 
paddle as motive power, and the decked sailing 
canoe where the paddle is of secondary impor¬ 
tance and a pair of bat wing sails eats up the 
miles of distance between you and your destina¬ 
tion. Both are fine sport, and both constitute the 
easiest form of travel in the open. Do not take 
sails on a canoe cruise unless you are going to 
have plenty of use for them, as they are heavy 
and much in the way in stowing duffle; and do not 
take an ounce more weight in any case than is 
positively necessary. 

I would set a limit of fifty pounds of belong¬ 
ings to every boy on the trip. Even if there are 
only trifling portages, such as lifting over down 
trees, around obstructions on the banks or over 
dam sites, too much duffle becomes a burden, and 
when afloat its weight brings the canoe danger¬ 
ously low down in the water and puts a lot of work 
138 


CANOE CRUISING FOR BOYS 139 


in paddling on the voyageur’s shoulders. The 
same canoe that will fly along like a fairy when 
properly loaded, will act like a submerged turtle 
when just a wee bit overloaded. And it is so easy 
to take too much! One of my first canoe trips was 
nearly spoilt by just this duffle trouble. We both 
swore ourselves black in the face that not a pound 
extra would be taken, but this is what we actually 
did take:—For guns we took the shotguns as a 
matter of course, and, as if that was not enough, 
the rifles also, in case any long range shots might 
offer, and then, piled on that, a revolver each for 
snakes and turtles, ammunition in generous quan¬ 
tities for the three,—let’s see, that makes 26 
pounds of extra useless weight, not counting the 
shotguns, which are doubtful commodities in a 
summer trip and apt to get you into trouble with 
game wardens, as snipe are the only game birds 
shootable in September when we went; then, as we 
might have a few miles sailing, we took along the 
sails, 25 pounds more, mostly in the way, and only 
used once, for we had head winds on all the other 
open stretches; then we took along a sack of pota¬ 
toes when we knew well we would pass lots of 
farms, another useless 20 pounds of weight—the 
wonder to me is that she floated at all when we 
set forth! As it was she had just three inches of 





140 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


freeboard, and was as logy as a water-soaked tree 
trunk. Well, we bad a strong northwest wind to 
face the first thing; five miles of it. Did we hoist 
the sails and tack? We tried it, but made as 
much leeway as headway and finally ended by 
paddling the whole distance, arriving by nightfall 
where we had allowed to reach in but three hours 
on the schedule. All the blankets, etc., were soak¬ 
ing wet, from water shipped aboard off the white- 
caps, and we were half the night drying them out 
so that we could get off to sleep. 

Our first portage was a hummer! Only around 
a dam, a few hundred feet, but it took five trips 
to do it—fire-arms, bedding, grub, cook outfit, tent 
and sails (now soaking wet, and all weighing 
twice what they would dry). Again tribulation 
camped on our trail when we struck long reaches 
of shallow water. She drew so much that we 
both had to get out and wade, towing her up 
stream. The end of the second day saw eleven 
miles of progress and 150 miles to go. On the 
third day we passed under a railroad bridge, went 
into camp and shipped back home by express the 
sails, guns, ammunition and spuds, and kept only 
the fishing tackle, tent, bedding and cook outfit, 
with a few provisions. Then we made easy 



GETTING BREAKFAST IN THE CANOE TARP. CAMP 

After bedding is cleared away, breakfast can be served on a camp table 
under the tarp. 



DAN BEARI) OR CAMPFIRE TENT 

A roomy model for a party of four canoe voyagers. 










CANOE CRUISING FOR ROYS 141 


progress, but our bad start had cost us two days ’ 
fishing at the lake which we were headed for. 

This little sketch of how not to do it brings to 
mind several points taught us by hard experience. 
In the first place everything in a canoe that water 
can hurt must go in a waterproof duffle bag, either 
side-opening or end-opening. For clothing, blank¬ 
ets, tent, etc., the 11 x 24-inch brown waterproof 
end-opening duffle bag costing a dollar is the 
thing. It will take folded blankets and tents 
easily and they can be pulled out without trouble. 
For food the side-opening bag 8 x 22 inches, with 
rows of pockets inside, is the thing. When you go 
ashore for the night campment, drive in two up¬ 
right stakes to windward of your cook fire and 
hang up this bag by the grommet holes in the lip, 
put there for that purpose. All your main food 
sacks are now in plain sight, in rows along the 
bottom of the kitchen bag, where each can be 
chucked back as used; and in the pockets are small 
bags of salt, tea, baking powder, soup powders, 
etc., while the knives, forks, spoons, chain pot¬ 
hooks and the like are handy in the top pockets. 
This duffle bag has a stout maple rod sewed into 
one lip, and to fasten it up you roll the other lip 
around this rod until the bag is rolled tight and 
then secure with rope around the bag or a pair 






142 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


of school hook straps. As these side-opening bags 
are rather expensive to buy I will give you the 
way to make them yourself. Get a yard of ten- 
ounce brown paraffined duck canvas at a ship 
chandler’s or awning maker’s. It costs forty 
cents a yard, and comes 28 inches wide. Cut off 
an eight-inch strip along one edge and out of this 
strip make two circular ends for your bag, 8 inches 
in diameter. Get a %-inch maple dowel from a 
pattern shop or department store or hardware 
store, and cut it 20 inches long. Sew a hem along 
both lips of your bag, and slip the rod into one 
lip and secure by sewing over the end of the hem. 
Now sew the circular ends half around to the side 
of your bag and fill in the rest of the space with 
a khaki end-cloth as shown in the pattern, finish¬ 
ing the whole thing with an edging of gray tape. 
Sew inside two khaki strips 8 inches wide by 30 
inches long, to make two rows of three pockets 
each. Each pocket is 8 inches wide and will take 
ten inches of your cloth, the back of the pocket 
being the wall of the bag. Put two school straps 
around the bag, about a foot apart, and join with 
a strap riveted around each of the two straps to 
make a carrying handle, or else just get a ten-cent 
shawl strap at the five-and-ten-cent store and use 
it in lieu of the school-book straps. Total cost: 



CANOE CRUISING FOR BOYS 143 


canvas, 40 cents, khaki, 20 cents, shawl straps, 10 
cents; all together, 70 cents. One bag will hold all 
the food four boys will need on a week’s canoe 
trip, and keep it dry and handy to use. For food 
sacks the standard sack for bulk food is 8 inch 
diameter by 10 inch depth, and they cost fifteen 
cents each. To make them yourself get from a 
sporting-goods store two yards of paraffined mus¬ 
lin, cut out eight-inch round bottoms, and 10 inch 
high by 24 inch circumference sides, sewing the 
sides around the bottoms and turning inside out. 
It can all be done on a domestic sewing machine, 
using a heavy needle and number 40 cotton. Fin¬ 
ish the food sacks with a foot of white tape, sewed 
up near the top of the bag for a tie-string. You 
will also need three plain rectangular 4 inch by 9 
inch bags, and four small 3 inch by 6 inch bags of 
the same paraffined muslin. To make paraffined 
muslin yourself, buy the ordinary unbleached mus¬ 
lin and steep in a mixture of a pint of turpentine 
with two bricks of paraffine dissolved in it. It 
will not dissolve cold, but if your tin can of turpen¬ 
tine is warmed in a kettle of hot water it will dis¬ 
solve the paraffine readily. Hang the muslin out 
to dry after soaking in the solution. 

The large food bags are to be marked rice, 

FLOUR, SUGAR, OATMEAL; the 9 X 4’s, CORN MEAL, 




144 CANOEING AND CRUISING 

prunes, coffee, pancake flour; and the small 3 
by 6’s, tea, cocoa, salt, raisins. Milk goes in its 
own cans of evaporated cream; eggs, in a 3 by 5 
inch tin can with friction top (holds 14 fresh eggs 
broken into it); potatoes and onions in an ordi¬ 
nary muslin flour sack; meat, bacon, butter, etc., 
in 8-inch friction top tin cans, costing 25 cents 
each, two will be plenty. All these provision sacks 
except the spud sack will go in the side opening 
grub bag; will weigh, all told, for a week’s cruise, 
about thirty pounds and will make about 150 
pounds of cooked food. Rain and spray, upsets 
and hard knocks will then make no difference to 
the grub pile; it is the only way to stow and carry 
food in a canoe. 

The cook kit to be taken along may be any of 
the well-known outfits, such as the nesting alumi¬ 
num set for four, the Forester, Stopple, Boy Scout, 
etc., or it may be plain set of nesting tin pails, 
three of them one inside the other, a couple of 
fry pans and some 7 by 2 inch tin mixing and 
baking pans. Each boy has his individual table 
set, of knife, fork, and spoon, cup, and nine-inch 
tin or aluminum plate, and you will want a wire 
grate and a folding reflector baker or an aluminum 
one with cover on which a fire can be built like 
a Dutch oven. The wire grate should have a cloth 




THE FORESTER TENT. WEIGHT 4% LBS. 

Designed by the author for canoeing and hiking in cold weather. 
With an open fire in front, the walls are at such an angle as to reflect 
all the heat down on the bedding. 



THE PERFECT SHELTER TENT. WEIGHT 3LBS. 

Designed by the author for summer cruising and hiking. Sides and 
front are of mosquito bar, with a changeable side piece to go on 
windward side. 

































































CANOE CRUISING FOR BOYS 145 


bag to pack in as it gets very sooty and will soon 
get the rest of the things in the canoe dirty if 
uncovered. 

For a tent there are several special canoe types 
on the market, the Hudson Bay, Dan Beard, Canoe 
Tent, and Forester being four types that have 
made good on long canoe trips where each night a 
new camp is made. You want something quickly 
and easily put up, with a few pegs and few poles. 
Canoe-cruise regulations call for a heavy meal at 
breakfast, an all-day paddle with a bite of lunch 
eaten in the canoe at midday, and a rousing feed at 
night. One usually looks out for a good site and 
a spring along about four o’clock, as camping and 
cooking after dark is a nuisance and takes away 
the pleasure of the cruise. Wherefore you want 
a tent that can be quickly put up, almost any¬ 
where. The Hudson Bay tent calls for a handy 
tree and a pair of shears in front (for it is too 
much to ask, to expect two trees to grow just the 
right distance apart at the right place, with a level 
bit of ground in between them!). The Canoe tent 
needs one short pole and two long rear stakes; 
and the Forester, three ten-foot saplings. These 
are easy to find in any thicket along a lake or 
stream bank. All three tents take eight to ten 
short pegs, and are put up in ten to fifteen min- 







146 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


utes time. Never pitch on a sloping ground site 
unless the slope runs from head to foot of the 
tent, a side slope is very uncomfortable to sleep 
on and the hoy furthest uphill will be continu¬ 
ally rolling down on the others in his sleep. One 
boy can put up the tent, while the others get night 
wood, water for the cookee and browse for the 
tent bottoms. 

The boy elected cook sets about preparing the 
evening meal. He will need about 45 minutes to 
do a good job, and will want good hot woods to 
do it with, so see that he has plenty of dry, hard 
maple, blackjack oak, white oak, pignut hickory 
and white birch to do with. The surest way to 
have a slow meal that is forever cooking, is to 
give the cook any old dry trash wood, such as 
balsam and pine. There is little heat in them, 
they are “out” most of the time, and the pot is 
forever boiling. But blackjack and maple will 
not only start the pots up in no time but their 
coals will keep them going after the flames have 
subsided. Get the boiled things going first, the 
pots over the fire amid the flames, and the pota¬ 
toes and onions peeled into the “mulligan,” a 
handful of rice added and some salt, and you can 
put the cover on and let her simmer. Add soup 
meat if you have it, or grouse breasts, chunks of 





CANOE CRUISING FOR BOYS 147 

deer meat, cut up rabbit, any old meat component; 
add a bouillon cube for each boy when the stew is 
nearly done, thirty-five minutes later, and she will 
taste fine and keep you in good health. Fry your 
fish dipped in egg and rolled in corn meal and 
set some one to tending the fry pan over a bed of 
coals while you make up the corn bread batter, 
squaw bread dough, or doughgods. These re¬ 
quire for a hot high fire a couple of blazing logs 
lifted up off the main fire and set on the edge of 
the wire grate, and the baking tin is then put 
under them on top of some coals, or the reflector 
baker, with its pan full of biscuits, is set in front 
of them. Boil rice in the other pot, and tea in 
the pail. For breakfast use your flap-jack flour 
for pancakes, and have coffee, fish fried in bacon 
grease with bacon on the side, and potatoes cubed 
and creamed. Plenty of these, with lots of fruit, 
will run you all day long. Aim to get the canoes 
in the water by eight o ’clock, stop paddling about 
noon for an hour to serve a cold lunch of ham 
or sardines with chocolate, cheese, raisins, nuts, 
and some Graham crackers, and be on your way 
again in an hour. At four the definite stop for 
the day is made. Pick a good site, on a point if 
possible to get away from flies and mosquitoes, 
and be sure to pitch somewhere near a spring. 





148 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


Any river that is inhabited,—that is, has farms 
and small towns on its banks,—is unsafe to use 
for drinking or cooking water. My twelve-year- 
old boy got a case of typhoid fever from one of 
our canoe cruises, where there was but one town 
on the river bank. The rest of us were badly 
physicked and just missed typhoid, but he had a 
severe case which nearly cost him his life. Since 
then I have always insisted on a spring for water 
or else boiled it before using. And, by the same 
token, refrain from dipping up the river water 
in a cup and drinking it, unless the river is wholly 
wild, like the Allagash in Maine, or the Lumbee in 
North Carolina, or Wading River in New Jersey, 
all of which streams give fine canoe trips. 

In lieu of a sail, a good thing to take along is 
a tarp for a floor cloth made of some light water¬ 
proof tent textile. If you have a mast step screwed 
to several ribs of your canoe, and a detachable 
cross bar, with a two-inch hole in it for a mast 
hole, and two brass hooks with wing nuts to se¬ 
cure the cross rail to the gunwale, you can easily 
cut spars at the lake bank and rig the 44 tarp’ ’ as 
a sail when you have a long down-wind traverse 
to make. Without the step and bar it is rather 
awkward to rig anything that will stand wind pres¬ 
sure and not become dangerous from coming 






CANOE CRUISING FOR BOYS 149 


adrift and upsetting the canoe in a gust. In mak¬ 
ing any traverse, study your weather and white 
caps before venturing out, for it is braver to say 
“No!” and stay ashore windbound than to be 
foolhardy and go out and get swamped. If you 
must make the traverse and the waves are high, 
do it with canoe lightly loaded in two trips, as a 
logy, heavily loaded canoe is a dangerous thing 
in choppy seas. 

In river work, haul her over logs, down trees 
and the like by getting out on the log, one on each 
side, and sliding the canoe over between you with 
the duffle aboard. In navigating rivers keep cut¬ 
ting across the heads of bends, the bow man an¬ 
ticipating the river at each bend and getting the 
canoe headed for the shallows, when the stern 
boy can then exert his strength and shove her 
ahead. Keep out of the full force of the current 
in the bends; it only makes you paddle twice as 
far and hard, and the force of the current is al¬ 
ways throwing your canoe broadside onto alders 
and rocks in the elbow of the bends. In running 
a rapids, be first sure that they are safe, as they 
change almost daily with the height of water. 
Look for a portage trail if you know nothing about 
the rapids and if there is a landing above the 
rapids, with a clearly defined trail through the 




150 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


forest, it is a safe bet that the rapids are dan¬ 
gerous and have been portaged by better men 
than you. In running white water the stern man 
has the say and the bow boy should not embarrass 
him by attempting to fend off with the paddle, 
etc. Only do this when it is clearly evident that 
the stern boy has not control enough to prevent 
her ramming. As a rule, the water parting around 
a rock will carry her bow clear if the stern boy 
guides her and sees that the stern follows clear. 

In general, back paddle so that the current flows 
faster than the canoe is going, and let her down 
easy at the difficult spots. In any event, keep out 
of the main force of the current if there is an 
easier passage, and always go along a rapids on 
foot ashore before running it. In many rivers 
and broad creeks there is plenty of white water 
not dangerous, only exciting. Follow the current 
where it is clearest of rocks, and, in passing one, 
back the stern of the canoe away from the 
rock, letting the current carry the bow clear. In 
all rapids running the duffle should be lashed 
in by your tracking line; in traversing a lake 
everything should be free and clear, as you 
may need to empty her in a hurry. In both cases 
stick to the canoe in case of upset, get her 
ashore in the rapids, and dump the water out 




CANOE CRUISING FOR BOYS 151 


of her in the lake, letting the duffle float where it 
will until the canoe is ready again. In both cases 
the paddles should be lashed to the canoe with 
about six feet of cotton rope, as they may be your 
only hold on the canoe, and if she once drifts 
away from you in a lake you are lost. Two boys 
treading water can lift a canoe clear enough to 
turn out most of the water, and then can get 
aboard from bow and stern simultaneously, being 
careful to jump at the same moment so as to bal¬ 
ance the weight. One boy alone can hardly empty 
a canoe unless over sixteen years of age and husky. 
If strong enough you can rock it out, or 11 shove’ ’ 
it out, either by swashing it from side to side, let¬ 
ting it slop out, or by giving it smart shoves to 
and from you, when the momentum of the water 
will slop it out over bow and stern alternately. 
A boy of twelve is not strong enough to do this 
and had best get inside the canoe and lie down in 
her awash. She will not sink, but will lie with 
about an inch of gunwale exposed. Keeping her 
on an even keel, the water can be dashed out of 
her if reasonably calm, but with a sea on the best 
way is to go astern and kick her ashore, climbing 
in and lying down in her when tired. Sooner or 
later she will drift ashore. Keep cool, play safe 
and do not start anything rash that you may not 




152 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


be able to finish. The canoe will always float her¬ 
self and you, and if not too cold you will arrive 
safely in time, even if you have a mile or so to 
drift. 

In river travel the banks are near, and if you 
stick to the canoe no eddy can pull you under. As 
a matter of fact upsets are extremely infrequent 
in canoe travel. I have yet to have my first one 
in over thirty years of canoeing in river trips, 
and in my sailing canoes have but three upsets in 
all that time to record. 

The second great branch of canoeing is that of 
canoe sailing in the great open bays and lakes, 
where the wind is too strong and the seas too 
heavy for an open type canoe to live. The wooden¬ 
decked sailing canoe has always been a popular 
“poor man’s yacht,” but for boys she is so heavy 
to paddle that until you get sixteen years or 
over it is too hard work to be fun. However, we 
boys did not let that worry us. We built decked 
canvas-covered sailing canoes that weighed about 
forty pounds, and had two sails, mainsail and jig¬ 
ger, and they could beat anything of their inches 
that carried canvas, and live in a sea that sent big 
catboats into harbor with three reefs in their sails. 
These craft I built four of; my chums two or three 
apiece, and, for long cruises down the great salt- 




THE CANOE TARP. CAMP 



An old canoeist’s dodge. Canoe is turned on its side with all duffle on shelf 
made by lower rim and tarpaulin, stretched as shown. A light, roomy canoe 
encampment. 



IN CAMP IN A CRUISING DECKED CANOE 

The author is just putting his head out from under the mosquito bar of the 
canoe cockpit tent. His chum is sleeping out under one of the canoe sails as 
shelter, the sleeping bag being rainproof. 


































CANOE CRUISING FOR BOYS 153 


water bays of the Atlantic Coast, sleeping in the 
canoe every night, they were simply Jim Dandy! 
Thirteen feet long by 32 inches beam and a foot 
deep was the preferred size, with a six-foot cock¬ 
pit in which you could sleep when the canoe was 
hauled out on the beach and the sand banked up 
around her. Contrary to the general impression 
spread by writers who do not know, the canvas- 
covered canoe is not “limp and logy”; instead she 
is fast and lively; she will not sink when capsized, 
but will keep herself afloat and you, too. And she 
paddles like a bird with the double-blade paddle, 
which the wooden sailing canoe would never do on 
a boy’s strength. 

We cruised in ours for weeks at a time. Some¬ 
times it would be but a day’s expedition up some 
big salt marsh creek after railbirds and snipe; 
others, it would be a fishing trip down the bay 
to some favorite bank, where the canoe would be 
moored to an oyster stake while its crew attended 
to the fish market; again it would be an extended 
consort cruise of two or more of these canoes, 
when both of them would be hauled out on the 
beach and the cockpit tents set up, while a board 
running from one canoe to the other would make 
the eating table. Many a night have I dozed off 
to sleep with the strong salt breeze strumming 


154 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


through the guy ropes of my canoe cockpit tent, 
the mosquitoes humming a lively tune outside, 
while within there would be solid comfort from 
the muslin mattress filled with fragrant sage and 
making the round contours of the canoe as com¬ 
fortable as your bed at home. I have paddled out 
into a roaring sea that even a large sloop would 
respect, in those able little decked canvas canoes, 
setting up a rag of sail and beating to windward 
like a flying fish, and only once in hundreds of 
miles of such canoeing have I been upset. It was 
during a squally northwest blow and I was snipe 
shooting on Marsh Point on the Raritan. I got 
thirsty and so set sails for the opposite shore a 
mile away where I knew there was a spring of 
iron water, highly prized by us boys because we 
believed that drinking it would make us strong! 
As the tide was running out strongly it took sev¬ 
eral tacks to make up for the drift in getting 
across, and in one of them my rudder jammed. 
Its regular pin had been lost and it was therefore 
hung with a couple of makeshift copper lashings 
to the screw eyes. At every other gust the canoe 
was knocked down to her cockpit coaming, but 
that was nothing unusual,—one simply jammed 
one’s toes under the lee rail and hiked out over 
the pickle! But this rudder jamming was an- 



CANOE CRUISING FOR BOYS 155 


other matter; I couldn’t steer now, except with 
a paddle blade, which is “nix” in a decked canoe, 
as it will not let you hang out to windward when 
the gusts come. Several times I was nearly un¬ 
balanced by the knockdown puffs, and finally one 
got me and I was pitched bodily overboard to 
leeward, taking the canoe with me. I remember 
leaping headlong into my own mainsail, and then 
a smother of salt water. When I came up, the 
first thing I noticed was my precious moccasins 
wavering down through the water. They had come 
off my feet while doing the dive into the mainsail. 
I dove for them with both eyes open, and got 
them both by great good luck. Next I felt 
inside the canoe for iny gun; it was lashed 
in securely, thank goodness! Then I loosened 
both main and mizzen halliards and unstepped the 
masts, which released the canoe so I could right 
her. The next stunt was to roll up the two sails 
and stow them inboard, and then go swimming 
after the paddles. I was a great little retriever, 
and soon had all the canoe belongings back in the 
cockpit, which was awash in the whitecaps. I 
was half a mile from shore, and so I went astern 
and turned myself into a human propellor, so that, 
helped by the strong wind and sea, I had soon 
kicked her where I could touch bottom and begin 



156 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


to wade with her. A fish hawk had been fol¬ 
lowing me interestedly, and now he swooped down 
and flew off with a white package left behind in 
my wake. I suddenly realized that that was my 
package of lunch he was making off with, with all 
my sandwiches in it! A frantic grab for the gun 
was futile, as he was already out of range—I owe 
that fish hawk a grudge to this day! However, 
there were two hard-boiled eggs and a couple of 
boiled crabs in the canoe, and so, taking off all 
my clothes and spreading them abroad in the 
marsh, I sat down on the paddles to a lunch of 
egg and crab while the clothes dried out. About 
four o ’clock the snipe came up the marsh in great 
flocks of fifty or a hundred apiece and I had some 
royal shooting. It was too dark to see the gun 
sights and the shells all shot before I was ready 
to go home. Outside the draw-bridge to the open 
sea, the waves were high, as I could tell by the 
big, smooth swells in the river, but she shot 
through the draw in great shape under paddle 
alone and made the two-mile trip in the dark, open 
sea without incident, hurdling the big whitecaps 
like a huntsman. A great little boat!—I use the 
mate to her now, and in one of these chapters will 
tell you how to build one for yourself at a cost of 
$7.50, complete. In paddling against a head wind 




the side-opening GRUB bag (open and closed) 

On a canoe trip the food Is best carried in paraffined muslin food 
bags inside a stout, side-opening, waterproof grub bag. 



READY TO GO OVERBOARD AGAIN 

The author putting in reefs before hitting the lake. A whitecap 
breeze is blowing outside. The night was spent under this tree, 
hauled up. 


















i . • 












■ 








' 

































■ 













































































































CANOE CRUISING FOR BOYS 157 

with such a craft you had best leave the dandy 
up, as it not only keeps her head staunch to the 
wind, but every side puff fills the dandy and you 
can just feel her shoving you along! 

In the paddling canoe with sail I have had two 
upsets in thirty years, one of which was in a how¬ 
ling southeast gale when we ran aground on a point 
and she turned a summersault over her own lee- 
boards ; and the other was in a squally northwest 
wind when I was navigating a narrow, crooked 
lake under sail. While the canoe was “in stays / 9 
—that is, luffing and coming about on another tack, 
—a sudden gust blew out of the wall of forest, 
broadside on, and knocked her over as if you had 
struck her with a giant hand! No amount of sea¬ 
manship could have avoided this, as the sail was 
perfectly loose and free, but a broadside gust 
from an entirely different point of the compass 
from that in which the wind is blowing is likely 
to hit you unexpectedly in narrow waters sur¬ 
rounded by high banks of forest, and so it is al¬ 
ways much safer to use paddle only in such places. 
As to the other upset, the leeboards were straight 
down, and you should always avoid a point likely 
to have a shoal on it when tacking in a high wind 
for, if she strikes bottom with the leeboards, you 




158 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


will have the ignominy of upsetting in a foot and 
a half of water! 

As to rigs for canoes, I have tried them all; 
leg-o’-mutton, bat wing, lateen and Canadian 
Club or battened leg-o’-mutton; and have settled 
on the latter for all my later canoes. Leg-o ^mut¬ 
ton is a slow sail, because of its bad leach, and 
its spars are so long as to be unstowable in a 
canoe with six-foot cockpit. Bat wing is too 
complicated a sail for a boy to make, and 
easily gets out of gear. Lateen has not only too 
long spars, but is unreefable, and is a danger¬ 
ous sail before the wind in a heavy blow. 
The Canadian Club, shown in our illustrations, 
has comparatively short spars, a good flat leach, 
and is easy to reef and stow. The dimensions 
given are right for a twelve-foot canoe, a larger 
sail can be carried, but you will have to reef it 
most of the time. A single set of reef points in 
mizzen and mainsail gives you canvas for a heavy 
blow, while reefing her down to her battens will 
give you a rag that you can navigate a gale in, 
like the time last summer when I crossed Green¬ 
wood Lake in ten minutes in Waterat IV, the 
present representative of the canvas-covered 
decked sailing canoe in which I navigate. 

Taken all in all, canoeing is a great sport, and 




THE “VARMINT” UNDER FULL SAIL 

This canoe was built by a “Field and Stream” subscriber from the 
plans and directions given in this chapter, when published in the 
“Field and Stream” magazine. 



THE “WATERAT IV” WITH FULL SAIL SET AND COCKPIT TENT 
















CANOE CRUISING FOR BOYS 159 


one that appeals particularly to boys and youths 
who have the adventurous exploring spirit in 
them. I have sailed everything from a full-rigged 
ship to a canoe, and, to this day I still keep three 
canoes in my fleet of pleasure craft, one of which, 
Waterat IV, is still the unbeaten crack of this 
section! 





CHAPTER III 


HOW TO BUILD A DECKED CANVAS CRUISING CANOE 

Any boy in the least acquainted with tools can 
build this canoe. I made my first one when I was 
twelve and two more when I was sixteen and nine¬ 
teen respectively. The first one had no sails and 
only a little cockpit three feet long, so that, while 
she was good for day cruises and paddling up 
creeks after snipe and rail birds, you could neither 
sleep in her nor sail her. The second had a six- 
foot cockpit and leg-o ’-mutton mainsail and jig¬ 
ger. Also a gaudy awning-canvas tent which went 
over the cockpit, and I had many a glorious cruise 
in her, sleeping at night in the canoe after haul¬ 
ing her out on the beach and banking sand around 
her to keep her steady. She had one defect which 
you should be warned against—she had a kyak 
bow and stern, little low six-inch oak blocks 
screwed to the keel at each end, just high enough 
to take the six ribbands of the frame. Easy to 
make, but, gee! she was a wet boat in heavy 
weather! That kyak bow would shoot through 

every wave like a dagger, and in spite of an eight- 
160 



DECKED CRUISING CANOES 161 

een-inch hood over the cockpit for’d, a deluge of 
sea water would come aft and most of it would 
stay in the canoe. But she would go like a streak, 
and when I was seventeen I sailed her across 
Prince’s Bay in a bird of a southeast blow, soaked 
to the ears with salt spray but cheerful as a clam 
at high tide. It was some hike, believe me! 

I stung another boy with her for $5 and built 
No. 3, which had a 14-inch bow and 12-inch stem, 
was fourteen feet long by 32 inches beam. She 
had lateen-rigged mainsail and jigger, weighed 42 
pounds, and was a corking little boat. I had her 
for ten years and cruised in her for weeks at a 
time. She finally died of numerous broken ribs, 
a bunch of kids using her holy bottom as a jump¬ 
ing stand one winter when she was left out in the 
yard. 

Number Four is shown in the accompanying il¬ 
lustrations. She is 16 inches deep at the bow and 
14 at the stern, 10 inches amidship, fourteen feet 
long, 33 inches beam and weighs just 40 pounds, 
exclusive of her sails. She will cost you $7.00 to 
build, not including her sails, and for an all-around 
cruiser is hard to beat, as she will live in water 
that would drown an open canoe, is a dry, rain¬ 
proof and mosquito-proof home to sleep in at 



162 CANOEING AND CRUISING 

night, and will sail dozens of miles where you 
would paddle one. 

Most of our writers of boys ’ books advise build¬ 
ing a canvas canoe of barrel hoops. That is con¬ 
clusive evidence that they never built a canoe in 
their lives, for of all the material to give you a 
cranky, unsafe, tippy canoe the barrel hoop is 
king. The reason is because it is round—just the 
shape to roll over—and can ’t be made to hold any 
other shape. Look at any good Indian model 
canoe (Morris, White, etc.) and you will see that 
it is flat-bottomed with a fair round bilge or turn¬ 
up from bottom to sides and it is hard to upset 
because you must submerge one side before the 
other can come up. Now any kind of a barrel 
hoop has been steamed round, there is not a flat 
spot in it anywhere, and to make a canoe even 
passably steady you want at least 20 inches of 
flat bottom before curving up over the bilge. 

The ideal rib stick is one that will tend to keep 
flat and yet permit a sharp bend upward at the 
bilge. There is no wood better for this purpose 
than black ash, though white will do. Go to any 
wagonmaker’s shop and ask him for a board of 
black ash about five feet long, an inch thick and 
five inches wide. He will charge you fifteen cents 
for it. Take it to the nearest wood-working mill 



DETAILS OF STEM CONSTRUCTION, DECKED SAILING CANOE 
“WATEBAT IV” 





DETAILS OF STERN CONSTRUCTION, DECKED SAILING CANOE 
“WATERAT IV” 






















































4 







* 










4 



















% 










DECKED CRUISING CANOES 163 


and get them to rip it up for you into strips one- 
eighth inch thick. You will get some twenty canoe 
ribs out of the board. While at the mill ask to see 
their No. 1 spruce stock. Tell them you want one 
board, planed both sides, sixteen feet long, free 
from knots. Have this ripped up into strips a 
quarter-inch thick until you have sixteen of them. 
You will have half your board still left and from 
it you will have two %-inch pieces ripped off 
and two 2-inch. Next, you want a piece of 2-inch 
by 3-inch white oak six feet long, two pieces of 
%-inch half-round yellow pine moulding sixteen 
feet long, two pieces %-inch quarter-round ditto 
and one piece 2% x %-inch beaded white pine for 
a cockpit coaming. Have them all wrapped up 
into a bundle, pay your mill bill, which should be 
about two dollars, and march home with the en¬ 
tire material for your canoe frame on your shoul¬ 
der. The bundle will weigh thirty pounds. 

Arrived home the first thing to do is to set to 
work at that stick of 2 by 3-inch white oak, for 
out of it you make the stem and stern knees. 
From the drawings herewith you will get the 
angles for bow and stern pieces. Saw across the 
top of the stick at this angle and again a parallel 
cut 14 inches from the top. Saw it straight across 
9 inches further on and take the two pieces so 


104 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


obtained and stand the 14-inch piece up on the 
other. You will at once see that you have, 
roughly, the bow knee. Draw the curve of the 
bow on both pieces of wood and saw off the super¬ 
fluous wood beyond the curve. You now must 
work both pieces into triangular shape and the 
best tool to do it with is a camp axe. Your stem 
should be half an inch thick at the extreme front 
so as to give room to screw on a brass stem-band, 
so draw two lines %-inch apart down the center 
of the front face of the blocks. Hew from these 
lines back to the rear corners with your axe until 
you have dubbed the stem and keel-piece roughly 
triangular in cross section and finish smooth with 
a plane. Now nail the stem to the keel-piece and 
you are ready to fit the deadwood, the triangular 
piece which holds both of them together. Take 
off the angle for this on a piece of paper from 
your already assembled stem and keel-piece and 
transfer the angle to your piece of oak stick, being 
careful to saw out the block with true cuts square 
across. 

If well done the deadwood block will fit snugly 
and you can screw it home with 2%-inch, No. 14 
iron screws into stem and keel-piece. Work over 
the deadwood block until you get a true fit, as this 
is what takes the shock if you ram anything (and 




Note center mould to left. 



RIB BANDS OF THE “WATEBAT IV” 
Note center mould to left. 






DECKED CRUISING CANOES 165 


you’re always ramming things on a canoe cruise). 
Drill screw-holes in the deadwood a little larger 
than the screws and just a little smaller than 
these in the back of stem and keel-piece. The bow 
knee is now done and the stern is made the same 
way. The next job will be to cut a shallow %-inch 
rabbet on stem and stern and keel-piece to take 
the canvas, and six notches on a side for the ends 
of the ribbands. The top notches must be deep 
enough to take two ribbands one on top of the 
other, y 2 inch deep. Now saw out the places in 
both stem and stern keel blocks to take keelson 
and keel, as shown in the working drawings, and 
the long job on stem and stern knees is done. 

The canoe will go ahead with a rush from now 
on. Take one of your %-inch strips and cut it 
13 feet long for a keelson. Cut a shallow notch 
in the center %-inch by 1 inch and cut one like it 
at every foot each way to within one foot from 
each end. Turn the notches down and screw on 
the stern and stem knees at each end of the keel¬ 
son. Follow with a ribband nailed along under 
the keelson and of the same length, and then fit 
the keel, rockering it 1 y 2 inches each way and 
screwing from underneath to the keelson with long 
3-inch screws or bolts. By rockering is meant 
tapering along the under side of the keel, which is 


166 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


made out of one of your 2-inch spruce strips and 
should taper down to %-inch deep at each end, 
beginning five feet from the end. The job is 
best done with a hatchet and finished to a line 
with the plane. 

Now you are ready for the center mould. Make 
it of box boards as shown in the illustrations and 
set up over the middle notch in the keelson. Now 
take the first of your ash ribs, slip it through the 
middle notch and bend it snugly around the mould 
board, tying together across the top with a piece 
of string so that the rib cannot fly out straight 
again. Now take four ribbands, slip them in pairs 
over the ends of the mid-rib, bend them in at bow 
and stern and nail them temporarily over their 
notches with thin brads. Do not cut them off un¬ 
til everything else is done, as there will be a lot 
of taking up and letting out before the bottom is 
even and smooth. Put on all the other ribbands, 
five on a side, spacing them evenly along the mid¬ 
rib and tacking them in place by brads driven 
through ribband and rib into the edge of the mould 
board. Tack them temporarily over their notches 
at stem and stern, letting each ribband take its 
natural curve. 

You are now ready for the ribs, only the last 
two of which at each end will have to be steamed. 


DECKED CRUISING CANOES 167 

Beginning each side of the mid-rib, shove in a rib 
down between the two ribbands of the gunwale, 
through the notch under the keelson and up 
between the opposite pair of gunwale ribbands. 
Tack it with a brad half-driven through the keel¬ 
son and rib and then push down the ends of the 
rib on each side until you get a true flat, almost 
like that of the mid-rib with almost as sharp a 
bend at the bilge. Lash tight with twine around 
the gunwale. You will also have to lash the mould- 
board down, as the tendency of the ash rib is to 
raise it and make your bottom not flat and safe 
but round and cranky. Put in the other ribs the 
same way, working in pairs towards bow and 
stern, always trying to have each curve a little less 
than the one before it and keeping them as flat 
across the keelson as possible. The last two will 
have to be steamed, easily done by simply wrap¬ 
ping a soaking towel of scalding water about the 
rib and letting it stand ten minutes while you drip 
on more steaming water from the tea kettle. 

The ribs just behind the stem and stern bend 
up from the keel so sharply that they simply 
must break, so, to put them in, whittle a block 
to shape and screw it down on the keelson, cut 
the rib in two and screw the lower ends of it to 
the block. 


168 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


Tie the ribs to the ribbands wherever they cross 
and then turn the canoe frame over. You will 
find it all hills and valleys—flat spot here, a bulge 
there, two halves of the same rib uneven, a lop¬ 
sided place somewhere else. What it needs is 
patient adjustment, shoving down the end of a 
rib in one place to give her more bilge, letting it 
up somewhere else, pulling a ribband in a little 
flatter or letting it out a bit, but finally the whole 
bottom will come out smooth and fair and is ready 
to rivet. 

Whether to use copper rivets or clinched copper 
nails I leave to you. All my canoes except this 
last one were done with 2d copper nails clinched 
inside and all were staunch and strong. In this 
one I used rivets (No. 1—%-inch long) but it was 
a tedious job as they all had to have holes drilled 
for them, a shallow countersink made to sink the 
rivet-head flush with the ribband, and the little 
burrs are most exasperating to keep on while you 
are hammering over the rivet head. With cop¬ 
per nails it is just a drill hole with the brad awl, 
insert the nail and clinch over. However, do 
them all but the gunwale, which will be all out of 
shape from the pressure of the rib ends, and then 
untie your twine and adjust the gunwale to get 
a fair and pretty sheer. Secure with brass screws 


BODY PLAN LINES SHOWING THE CURVE OF RIBS END VIEW OF HOME-MADE LEE BOARDS 



PLAN OF FRAMING, DECKED SAILING CANOE “WATERAT IV 

























































































































































































. . 































* 











* 





DECKED CRUISING CANOES 169 


and cut off the rib ends flush with the gunwale. 
You will find that the strain of the ribs on the 
ribbands has pulled both your stem and stern knee 
out of shape so that ugly cracks show around the 
dead wood block. You now pull out all those tem¬ 
porary brads in the ribband ends and free the 
stem and stern. Close up the cracks snugly with 
a few taps of the hammer and then put back the 
ribbands, beginning with the gunwales and cut¬ 
ting each off to exactly fit in its notch. Secure 
with %-inch brass screws, two to the notch. 

The frame is now done and should weigh 24 
pounds. Next you go in for the deck framing. 
At bow and stern insert the triangular white pine 
boards called breasthooks. Cut a 1%-inch hole 
for the mainmast step and cut out an oak block 
with a 1-inch round cup drilled in it for a footstep 
for the mainmast and secure it to the bow dead- 
wood, giving the mainmast a pretty “rake” or 
lean aft. Now for the cockpit. If you are going 
to sleep in her it ought to be six feet long, so 
the cross-braces must go at the third rib each 
way from mid-rib. Make these cross-pieces out 
of your 2-inch spruce strip, sawing them so as to 
pitch an inch each way from the center. Cut a 
notch for the deck ridge piece and then put in your 
braoes with iy 2 -inch brass screws driven into their 


170 CANOEING AND CRUISING 

ends through the gunwale. At the same time take 
out the mould board as you no longer need it. 
Next get out your ridge pieces of the 2-inch spruce 
strip, planing them to the ridge along the top sur¬ 
face and fitting them into notches in the cross¬ 
braces and breasthooks at bow and stern. The 
rear ridge piece wants a 1%-inch hole cut in it 
for the jigger mast step, so you had better nail 
reinforcing strips on each side where this hole 
goes through. The cockpit coaming should go 
about three inches from the gunwale, parallel to 
it, so lay off the three inches on each side on the 
cross-braces. Then cut from your 2 1 /2-inch white 
pine beaded cockpit coaming two pieces of the 
same length as between the marks and screw them 
to the cross-braces, allowing the beading to just 
project above the cross-brace. To fit the coam¬ 
ing sides, measure off two lengths a little longer 
than you need, cut a spreader six inches shorter 
than the inside measurement from gunwale at 
the mid-rib and bend the two coaming sides around 
this spreader, held fast with a loop of rope at each 
end. Pick up this frame and put it on the canoe 
and saw off the coaming ends so that they will ex¬ 
actly fit between the cross-braces, slip them into 
place and secure with blocks, besides nailing with 
brads to the cockpit end pieces. At each rib you 


DECKED CRUISING CANOES 171 

will now need a small block between gunwale and 
cockpit coaming secured by 1%-inch brass screws 
through the gunwale and 1-inch screws through 
the coaming. When all are in, the spreader can 
be knocked out and the canoe frame is ready for 
the canvas and will weigh 28 pounds. 

To make the canvas lie smoothly a last job 
will be to plane the edges of the ribbands round 
and smooth so that sharp rib edges will not make 
the canoe look like the ribs of a starved dog. Get 
ten yards of 10-oz. duck canvas (20 cents a yard). 
It will weigh 100 oz. or a little over 6 lbs. Cut it 
in half and have the two 5-yard pieces sewed to¬ 
gether on the sewing machine along the blue line 
overlap mark. Now take off the keel and lay 
this seam along the keelson ribband, tacking it 
here and there with 4-oz. copper tacks. Fold the 
canvas up over bow and stern and tack here and 
there to the gunwale. Cut off the surplus all 
around and save all of it, for there is enough for 
both bow and stern deck and the strips of deck 
outside the coaming. Now stretch and tack on 
the canvas, working each way from the center, 
but do not drive the tacks home nor use more 
than one every four inches. At the point where 
the stem and stern rabbet crosses the crack in the 
bow and stern knee, drill a half-inch hole and drive 



172 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


in a soft white pine plug called a stop water. Next 
daub the whole rabbet over with white lead paste 
and stretch the canvas tight into the rabbet, tack¬ 
ing close together. Now work back along the gun¬ 
wale towards the mid-rib, stretching the canvas 
as tight as you can, tacking every two inches and 
being sure to work on opposite sides of the canoe 
alternately. In spite of all your care there will 
probably be a gather or pucker in the canvas 
amidships, but do not let this worry you, simply 
slit it four inches down from the gunwale and 
sew up the overlap. Take your left-over canvas 
and get out the bow and stern decks, tacking them 
over the side of the gunwales. You will also find 
that the original pieces of canvas cut off along 
the side when reversed will exactly fit along the 
coaming. Tack them to it, stretch taut over the 
gunwale and trim off all the hangover. 

The canoe is now ready for paint and weighs 
34 pounds. I have tried all kinds of ways to re¬ 
duce the paint weight and also its cost. On this 
last canoe I tried one coat of shellac and two of 
Sherwin-Williams willow green canoe varnish. 
Total paint bill $3.00, total weight 6 pounds. On 
the whole the cheapest and best was that on 
Watered III, two coats of white lead paint and a 
finish of any color preferred. Avoid varnishes 


DECKED CRUISING CANOES 173 


and shellacs and save expense. You ought to come 
out under $2.00 cost and 8 pounds weight. After 
the paint is on, put your %-inch yellow pine half- 
round moulding along your gunwales, and the 
%-inch quarter-round beading around the cock¬ 
pit. Give these two coats of varnish and you are 
ready to go at your rigging. 

I have tried leg-o’-mutton, lateen, and battened 
leg-o’-mutton or Canadian Club, and on the whole 
I prefer the latter. The leg-o ’-mutton is the sim¬ 
plest, but it has long spars impossible to stow in 
the canoe, and its baggy leach makes it slow sail¬ 
ing. The lateen also has long spars, but the draft 
is excellent and fast. It is, however, hard to reef. 
Waterat IV, my latest canoe, has the battened leg- 
o’-mutton shown in the illustrations. It is a top- 
heavy, dangerous rig in large sizes for any but 
first-class canoe sailors, and the amount of canvas 
shown in the photographs is u man’s sized. ’’ Sail¬ 
ing the little witch in a squally breeze is some 
busy occupation! However, by making the boom 
of the mainsail two feet shorter and all the rest 
of the measurements in like proportion (the 
actual dimensions as given in the sail plan draw¬ 
ing) a very good safe rig is had. The best sail¬ 
cloth is American Drilling, 14 cents a yard, 
and you will want about eight yards. To lay 


174 CANOEING AND CRUISING 

out a sail, choose a level spot on the lawn and 
stake out the sail according to the dimensions 
given, cocking the boom up 18 inches above a right 
angle and setting the gaff up nearly straight, al¬ 
lowing just room for a block between it and the 
mast head. Join the stakes with twine and spread 
out the canvas under the twine outline, always 
laying it parallel to the leach or after-edge of the 
sail. Hem it all around and put in grommets 
every foot along the boom, gaff and luff. To put 
in the batten, fold over a pocket in the sail just 
large enough to pass a ^-inch by 1 -inch strip of 
spruce ribband and sew a seam along both edges 
of the pocket on the sewing machine. To make 
the spars you can buy l^-inch and 114 -inch round 
spruce sticks 14 feet long at any sash-and-door 
mill for about 25 cents apiece and they will save 
you much weary planing as all they need is taper¬ 
ing at the ends. The masts are of l^-inch stock, 
booms and gaffs 114 -inch. For gaff jaws you can 
buy a regular brass canoe gaff jaw and bend it 
over at the right angle to grip the mast when the 
gaff is up. You will need 5 two-inch mast rings 
for the luffs of mainsail and mizzen, and don’t for- 
get to grease the mast with tallow candle or slush. 
Four brass cleats and four pulley blocks com¬ 
plete your running rigging. Two pulley blocks 



■ •«* 




ROUNDING THE MARK 

An exciting moment in a race of decked sailing canoes with 
bat-wing rigs. * 


niif—iiniii I I aitBBWnSIMl 



THE “VARMINT” UNDER AN ASH BREEZE 















DECKED CRUISING CANOES 175 

are for the halliards at main and mizzen mast 
heads, one on the deck for a main halliard fair- 
leader and one on the rudder-head for the mizzen 
sheet. 

For extras, first of all, a bottom grid. Cut up 
what you have left of the ribband stock into 6-foot 
lengths and tie them to the ribs in the cockpit 
along between the ribbands. Otherwise your toes 
will be digging into the canvas bottom all the time, 
making unsightly dents in it. Another way is to 
tie in a sheet of oilcloth or heavy canvas, which 
will serve to keep your feet off the bottom. You 
want two canoe paddles, a big double blade with 
drip cups, and a little single-blade pudding-stick 
for working in narrow creeks, frogging, etc. The 
latter may be 30 inches long by 5 inches wide and 
you saw and whittle it out of a white pine board. 
Then you want a cockpit tent to have the best 
fun in a canoe. Get six yards of 8-ounce duck can¬ 
vas. Make a rope frame with two spreaders the 
same size as your cockpit and stretch the rope 
frame between main and mizzen masts 30 inches 
above the cockpit. Over this spread your canvas, 
cutting and pinning until you have a little rec¬ 
tangular house over the cockpit, and have it sewed 
up on the machine. Cut a door in one side and fill 
with mosquito netting. Put in staples in the cock- 


176 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


pit leading along the sides and grommets in the 
bottom hem of the tent to match the staples. Take 
along a browse bag and fill it with leaves or sage 
at night, and, my word for it, you will sleep in 
that mosquito-proof, rain-proof and damp-proof 
canoe-house like a major! 


CHAPTER IV 


CANOE FITTINGS 

The day of sail canoeing seems to have gone 
out of vogue of late, giving place to the light, open 
Indian type of canoe. Time was when one could 
go to the far ends of the earth in the canvas-cov¬ 
ered cruising canoe or its heavier wooden coun¬ 
terpart, though I always preferred the former. 
I see no good reason for this change, and hope 
that these chapters on the canvas cruiser will do 
something to revive a most interesting type of 
long-distance canoeing. As a matter of fact you 
can build a very serviceable canvas canoe with 
spruce and ash framing and ten-ounce duck skin 
which will not weigh over thirty-five pounds. Nes- 
smuk, who navigated in the lightest wooden canoes 
in the world, weighing but 11 lbs., seemed to 
think that canvas canoes gained in weight with 
age and were limp, logy, and non-floating when 
awash. As a matter of fact he spoke from hear¬ 
say on this matter and never gave the canvas 
canoe a chance. Far from being logy it is as taut 

and spruce a craft as floats, lively and safe in sea- 

177 


178 CANOEING AND CRUISING 

ways that would have held Nessmuk’s ten-foot 
open canoe helplessly wind-bound, and, if you up¬ 
set, which may happen if some accident like a 
jamming rudder befalls you, she will fill to the 
brim and yet carry your weight nicely, while you 
kick her ashore, or, if the seas are not too choppy, 
you can bail her out from the water alongside, 
crawl in over the stern and go your ways rejoicing. 
I have done both and I know . And she is the only 
solution of the mosquito problem in a cruise along 
the great Atlantic bays, such as the one to Curri¬ 
tuck Sound and back via inside route from New 
York. For the canvas cruising canoe is the one 
impervious sleeping resort—where marsh mos¬ 
quitoes abound. Its tent is virtually a little rec¬ 
tangular house over the cockpit, and is provided 
with a mosquito blind inside the flap. When you 
retire for the night, not only is the tent buttoned 
firmly to the cockpit all around, but the bottom 
edge of the mosquito bar is also. You gather a 
few armfuls of sage for bedding, strew them in 
the bottom of the canoe, pile sand around her as 
she lies up the beach, step in the two masts and 
guy the tent between them, leading out to pegs 
on the beach,—and the ravenous horde of sting- 
arees outside can sample the tent or the canvas 
deck, or the canoe bottom, to their heart ’s content 


CANOE FITTINGS 


179 


for all you care. In making a canoe tent, ordinary 
sober whites and drabs seem out of keeping with 
such a gay bird as the canoe has been proving her¬ 
self to be all day long. I always prefer something 
loud in awning effects, broad, noisy stripes that 
are blatantly aggressive on the color-scheme of 
the surrounding scenery. These stripes should go 
vertically, and four feet high is plenty. The tent 
should be just the length and width of your cock¬ 
pit, which will be about 2 feet wide by 6 feet long. 
To make it, sew two strips of yard-wide awning 
duck together, hemming across the ends. This 
piece will give you both sides and the top. Get 
out two more strips a little over two feet wide and 
five inches longer than the height of the tent. Hem 
at the bottom and sew to the other piece of can¬ 
vas, making the ends of the tent. Each of these 
ends will now have two five-inch flaps sticking up 
above the tent top. Get two spreaders (stout 
sticks, like broom handles) and sew these flaps 
around them, sewing the leftover edge inside the 
top of the tent at the ends with a double seam. 
Eun in two bolt ropes of %-inch white cotton rope 
inside the tent from one stick to the other, and 
sew it to the canvas every foot, or overstitch it 
to it all along its length. Bend on a bridle to 
each of the sticks and put in grommets every foot 


180 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


along the bottom of the tent. To set up:—Run 
the canoe up on the beach, pile sand around her, 
step the main and mizzen masts furled, lead out 
guy-ropes for bridles of the fore and aft spreader- 
sticks of the tent and guy to pegs in the sand. 
Use the main and mizzen sheets for side guys. 
Along the outside of your cockpit should be a row 
of brass awning buttons or hooks, which you can 
get from any ship chandlery, and you now snap 
the grommets over these hooks and the tent is up. 
For doors you simply leave about three feet of 
the middle seam on each side unsewed, and sew 
to the edges of the flap thus formed a loose fold 
of green mosquito netting of the strong linen kind, 
that they use for salt water mosquito bars. This 
arrangement allows you to pin back one flap and 
get the air, the opening being covered by the 
mosquito bar. As the rest of the canoe is mos¬ 
quito proof this bar will ensure you a good nights 
sleep, no matter how mosquitoey the country, and 
in the day time along its Atlantic marshes the 
mosquitoes are generally at peace with the world. 
The canoe tent is good and comfortable for mid¬ 
summer camping, and is insect and snake-proof, 
besides giving the maximum of comfort with the 
least browse, since its circular shape goes in very 
well with the contours of one’s body. I have slept 



“WATERAT IV” WITH HER CANVAS ON 
Showing deck timbers. 


tl~l! CANOE lAJt> OUT ON tdt G&OClN» 



-■ vvV** 


HIAWATHA 
HAD 




”°. 1 ; Of noc. Acncath tnc U^fACt 



THE WAY AN INDIAN BUILDS A BIRCH BARK CANOE 

It is first moulded in the earth and the ribs formed and secured. 
They are then dug out and the bark skin bent on. 


4 
































CANOE FITTINGS 


181 


in them for weeks, and have even tried it off shore 
at anchor, but this is apt to end rather moistly 
as you never know, when you drift off to sleep, 
what the weather is going to do during the night. 

Nessmuk’s “pudding stick” or auxiliary paddle 
I have tried and found good. Get a piece of 
%-inch by 4-inch clear spruce about two feet 
long, and whittle from it a miniature paddle with 
a seven-inch blade 4 inches wide. Tie it to a rib 
of the canoe with a bit of twine "so you can drop 
it any time. 

It is very useful when working up salt creeks 
after rail, snipe or reed birds. Hold the shotgun 
in one hand and maneuver her along with the pud¬ 
ding-stick in the other. If a shot offers, drop the 
stick alongside while you attend to fresh fowl for 
the larder. 

A 3y 2 - or 4-pound folding galvanized anchor, 
costing about $1.50, is a necessity; also a small 
bow chock on each side of the stem, as there will 
come times when you will simply have to lie to, 
when paddling is impossible against head seas. 
You can’t do anything with her without the bow 
chocks unless you perform the delicate maneuver 
of crawling out and tying your anchor-line to the 
stem ring. The anchor is also handy for fishing 


182 CANOEING AND CRUISING 

or resting for lunch, in the middle of a long tra¬ 
verse. 

I do not advise a folding centerboard for a can¬ 
vas canoe. They are a necessity on the larger 
wooden cruising canoes, but the little fellow is 
easy to keep on a level keel and is in fact a boy’s 
paradise in all kinds of blows, so that a good 2 y 2 - 
inch or 3-inch yellow pine keel the entire length of 
the canoe will keep her from making leeway quite 
as w T ell as anything of a folding nature. Besides, 
the smallest of these made is 24 inches long and 
requires about three inches of flat keel to screw to. 
A good brass drop rudder is, however, a luxury 
not to be despised. You can buy these at more or 
less fancy prices, compared to the cost of building 
the canoe (about the same money), but you can 
make one for less than a dollar. Get a piece of 
half-inch brass pipe 16 inches long and slot its 
lower end with a hack-saw. Spread the slot to 
pass a 1-16-inch brass rudder plate. Cut this out, 
of the conventional round-end rudder shape, 8 
inches long by approximately six inches broad. 
Pin near bottom with ^-inch brass bolt. Drill 
two 3/16-inch holes in the back of the pipe to re¬ 
ceive the rudder hangers, which are stout brass 
awning hooks screwed into the stern-post and left 
upside down. They have just the right slope to 


CANOE FITTINGS 


183 


allow the rudder to be easily shipped. Finish the 
rudder by filing a flat at the top to receive the 
yoke, which should have an eye in the bottom to 
pass the twine for lowering and raising the rud¬ 
der. The only other hardware you will need is a 
jam cleat for the rudder line, two for the main 
sheet inside the cockpit, and one on the bow deck 
for the anchor. Halliard cleats are best on deck 
screwed to the main deck carline. So equipped 
you will find a canvas canoe trip one of the most 
enjoyable cruises you ever undertook. 

I propose to add here a foot-note on center- 
boards which has been several years in the mak¬ 
ing. Leeboards are objectionable as being clumsy 
and landlubberly; I have always preferred a 
fixed keel. This latter will, however, not do much 
towards minimizing your leeward drift when sail¬ 
ing closehauled, so I have schemed much for some 
sort of canoe centerboard for canvas sail canoes. 

Of course the first thing to be investigated was 
the folding metal fan centerboard, used on wooden 
sailing canoes. These run from 24 to 40 inches 
long and, even in galvanized iron cost $8, or more 
than the cost of the canoe; but that is not its worst 
defect. The width of three or more inches re¬ 
quired by the base of the folding centerboard 
trunk puts it out of the question for attaching to 


184 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


a %-inch keelson. If I were building a larger 
Waterat of, say, 17 feet L. W. L., intended mainly 
for sailing purposes, I would make the keel of 5- 
inch stock, fining down to 1 inch at stem and stern 
and riveting my ribs across it inside. With this 
keel there would be plenty of room to screw down 
the trunk of the folding board, and I am sure that 
such a cruiser for two men in salt water or lake 
country would be nearly ideal, for she could carry 
a lot of sail, would be much lighter than the 
wooden cruising canoe, and therefore paddle more 
easily, and it was the bugbear of this tedious and 
laborious paddling that eventually led to the down¬ 
fall of the popularity of the wooden sailing canoe. 

My cogitations on centerboards for the Wa- 
terats, as built, led to the design of a thin wooden 
trunk of shape to take a 12 x 36 x %-inch brass 
dagger centerboard. This board was to be lined 
inside with canvas, the lips of which were to be 
brought out and tacked over the canvas on the 
keel, thus making a watertight canvas surface in¬ 
side the trunk, for it is obvious that a plain wooden 
trunk would surely leak because of the joint be¬ 
tween keelson and keel which cannot be got at to 
calk. By lining the trunk with canvas this diffi¬ 
culty is obviated. To construct such a board, cut 
a slot through keel, keelson and ridge timber of 


CANOE FITTINGS 


185 


upper forward deck % x 12 inches. Let in two up¬ 
rights of y 2 x 1-inch oak, necked down to % inch 
where they pass through keel and upper ridge 
timber, and screw these into place at each end of 
the slots, setting the joint in white lead paste. 
Now screw to each side of these uprights the 
sideboards of the trunk, with their canvas inside 
facings already stuck fast on them by painting 
down with several coats of paint. These facings 
should have about three inches of free canvas 
along their lower edges, which canvas is pulled 
down through the slot in keel and keelson and 
brought around outside the canoe, where they are 
pulled smooth and flat and tacked outside the 
main canvas skin of the canoe with copper tacks 
set close together and liberally doped with white 
lead paste. This construction will give you a 
watertight, canvas-lined centerboard trunk suit¬ 
able for a narrow dagger-type centerboard of 
i/s-inch brass with a wooden stop or top, which 
board is to be shoved down through the slot in 
the upper forward deck, which is the upper end of 
your trunk. 

The above design is easily put in while build¬ 
ing the canoe, and, even for a built one, simply 
involves taking off the forward upper deck so as 
to get at the work. As Water at IV was wanted 


186 CANOEING AND CRUISING 


up at the June encampment of the Camp Fire 
Club and I was too busy to attempt any extensive 
work on the canoe that year, I built on her a de¬ 
tachable keelboard, put on and taken off with wing 
nuts like a set of leeboards as we used to do with 
keel rowboats. All you needed was a piece of 8xyg- 
inch yellow pine about three feet long, and two 
*4-inch carriage bolts 2 y 2 inches long with wing 
nuts. It did not take half an hour to put this 
scheme into execution. I sawed a slant fore and 
aft on the keelboard, so that in running aground 
or striking anything submerged I would not be 
brought up all standing and have something 
ripped loose. Two carriage bolts were driven 
through, about eight inches from either end of the 
keelboard; the holes for them were marked on the 
2 %-inch keel (which, you will remember, is per¬ 
manently secured to the bottom of the Water at 
models), and, before putting her overboard, the 
carriage bolts of the keelboard were shoved 
through these holes in my keel and secured fast 
with the two wing nuts. Other sailors had lee¬ 
boards ; I had a keelboard! and, for a long time, 
they were mystified as to what kept the Water at 
so well up into the eye of the wind with no visible 
lee-board gear. 


PART THREE: MOTOR BOAT MANAGE¬ 
MENT AND CONSTRUCTION 


v 



PART THREE: MOTOR BOAT MANAGE¬ 
MENT AND CONSTRUCTION 


CHAPTER I 

CHOOSING YOUR MOTOR BOAT 

Because of its engine, a motor boat is an ex¬ 
pensive thing for a boy or youth to buy, yet by 
picking up a second-hand one in good condition or 
building one from knockdown frames and pat¬ 
terns a very successful launch can be had for as 
little as $50 to $75. For one reason or another, 
owners are entirely willing to part with a per¬ 
fectly good motor boat for a price far below its 
original cost. I have seen many a good one sold 
for $75 that cost $250 new, and cheaper boats 
in proportion. Then, with the knockdown-boat 
proposition, the whole cost of the hull is as low 
as $25, and the engine can be picked up second 
hand for $15 up, or bought new on some partial 
payment plan. 

Finally, any good rowboat may be made a mo¬ 
tor boat by the mere addition of an outboard 

motor, of which no less than ten good models are 
189 


190 


MOTOR BOATING 


now in the market and the older types of which 
can be picked np very cheaply. 

If yon are mechanically inclined and not much 
of a sailor, or your waters are poor for sailing, 
yon will make np your mind to own a motor boat, 
and the first thing to decide is what type to have 
it. The hulls are roughly divided into two gen¬ 
eral classes, the long and narrow speedy boats, 
not very able in a seaway; and the tubbier models, 
able to get along on the open ocean and fine for 
big bays and lakes. Taking first the case where 
you have not much open water, say a river or 
long narrow lake, naturally you want all the speed 
you can get out of the horsepower of your engine, 
and this is had by a long narrow model, a tubby 
boat being out of place in such waters. Where I 
live, on Deal Lake, we have ten miles of long, 
narrow arms and bays and the waves are never 
over a foot high. Consequently our motor boat 
Adelaide is a speedy craft, one of the fastest on 
the lake, 20 feet long by 38-inch beam, with a 3% 
horse Ferro engine giving her about ten miles 
speed. She is timbered for a six horse, double¬ 
cylinder Palmer engine, guaranteeing her thirteen 
miles an hour, but I used the smaller engine to save 
gasoline and because ten miles was all the speed 
we could reasonably handle. We have used her 



A HUSKY OPEN LAUNCH FOR OPEN WATER OR LARGE LAKES 



THE HUNTING CABIN LAUNCH 
Engine is under the lazarette astern. 



A DEEP SEA MOTOR CRUISER 

This type can cross the ocean and is exceedingly seaworthy 





















CHOOSING YOUR MOTOR BOAT 191 

four years on the lake, and the engineer and cap¬ 
tain is my 12-year-old son, who starts and runs 
her himself, and I seldom have to bother with it 
except to get him out of trouble when the engine 
misbehaves. This is generally not the engine’s 
fault; once he fed her oil so much and so fast that 
she got oil bound, with the spark plug all sooted 
up and the engine trailing a cloud of white smoke 
from the burning oil; once he lost his pump suc¬ 
tion and nearly burned the engine up before he 
stopped her; and once he got the timer all out 
of adjustment so she could not make any speed, 
but these things were easily remedied and you 
cannot catch him on those particular tricks again! 

It seemed to us that that boat would be ideal 
for Barnegat Bay. Towing a couple of sail canoes 
as tenders, loaded with duffle and tents, what a 
time we could have with her fishing, shooting and 
camping on the dunes down the lower bay! What 
a time, indeed! She looked good to us, so we 
hired an automobile truck and shipped her down 
there. In the upper bay she did well and I started 
the first cruise with six boys, our tents, grub, duf¬ 
fle and what-not, with the canoes towing astern. 
We had a week’s camp up on the Metedeconk 
River, a tributary of Barnegat, and the boat was 
fine for transportation as there was plenty of good 


192 


MOTOR BOATING 


water. Later we started down to the lower bay 
and our troubles began. The bay is some six 
miles wide there, and generally has a neat sea on, 
and through those waves the Adelaide cut like a 
knife, drenching us and the duffle with salt spray. 
All right; we used the boat cover for a tarp, and 
managed to keep the engine dry so she would run, 
but that was not the worst. All along the shores 
of the lower bay the sea grass beds extend out 
for miles; there is no good water except in the 
buoyed channels, so, as soon as we spied a good 
camp site in the dunes and turned the boat to¬ 
wards shore, she promptly wound a wad of weeds 
around the propeller and gummed the works. The 
engine just spun around, and the boat stood still. 
We were miles from shore, and it was up to me to 
go overboard with a hunting knife and cut away 
those weeds. A cold job, at dusk of a brisk Sep¬ 
tember day, with the keen northwest wind cutting 
across the waters! No sooner done and the en¬ 
gine started again, when she wadded up a second 
time! This time I cut her clear and there was 
nothing else to do but paddle that motor boat back 
to the channel with the canoe paddles! Darkness 
came on, and we were homeless in an open motor 
boat with a thunderstorm brewing and no chance 
to get ashore except where civilization had cleared 


CHOOSING YOUR MOTOR BOAT 193 


the way of weeds to a harbor. We nosed along at 
half speed through the darkness, feeling our way 
down channel, and every now and then getting 
into weeds again,—when me for over the side 
with chattering teeth and hacking knife! Finally 
we put into the harbor of Lavalette and we all 
camped out in the cockpit of a sloop, anchored 
the farthest out; the hardest sleeping I ever ex¬ 
perienced, for that sloop was a racer and her cock¬ 
pit floor was ribbed with hard oak foot-braces for 
the helmsman! 

Next morning, after a long search, we found a 
beach where we could get in, but it wasn’t just 
where we would liked to have camped, and it in¬ 
volved a long pack trip over the dunes. We had 
several days of snipe shooting and surf and bay 
fishing, but we never took the motor boat down 
there again. 

So, if you have weeds or shallow water you 
must allow for a tunnel stern boat and put a 
square small-mesh chicken wire screen over the 
propeller well to keep the weeds out of the pro¬ 
peller. Reversing the engine helps somewhat in 
clearing weeds, but not much, particularly if they 
are thick. 

This brings us to the question of sterns in gen¬ 
eral. The old type of fan-tail stern used in sail 


194 


MOTOR BOATING 


boats was designed to give an overhang which 
conld make a foundation for the main sheet travel¬ 
ler, main cleat, etc., and it was in no danger of 
being submerged by following waves because the 
lift of the sail pulled upon it strongly, so she 
had no tendency to squat. But, with a propeller 
underneath, sucking out all the water under the 
stern and driving it aft, the fan-tail stern squatted 
down flat to the water until it got a bearing sur¬ 
face, and that put it so low that a following sea 
would climb right over the stern and swamp the 
boat. And so grew the box-end, stubby, motor- 
boat stern, made in a number of ways, but all with 
the idea of providing a buoyant, lifting stern that 
would slide right over the water and that a fol¬ 
lowing sea would simply lift up, not swamp. 
These motor-boat sterns are classed as flat tran¬ 
som, Norman V, sloping transom, sloping V, 
compromise, and canoe sterns. Of these the flat 
vertical transom is the easiest to build, but re¬ 
quires an outboard rudder, hung on gudgeons; 
the Norman Y is good to look at, and not hard to 
build, in fact it is easier in some ways than the 
flat transom, for one large, wide oak board is not 
required, two smaller ones doing the service just 
as well, jointed at the point of the Y. The for¬ 
ward-sloping flat transom or V both look well, and 


CHOOSING YOUR MOTOR BOAT 195 


give a maximum of lifting power to the stern, 
and both require under-hung rudders. The com¬ 
promise and canoe sterns are both hard to build 
for amateur carpenters, as the planks have so 
much strain on them that, unless they are steamed, 
they will likely split when the nails are driven 
home and I would warn boy carpenters off from 
such difficulties. My big 35-foot cruiser the Go 
Sum was built with a canoe stern, and what a time 
we did have bending those cypress planks and 
getting them to stay nailed without splitting! 

For a seagoing motor boat or one used in wide 
open waters the bow also must receive considera¬ 
tion. The plain, straight-sided bow, with no flare 
will make a wet boat of her, as there is nothing to 
catch the waves and hurl them back, instead they 
wash up and over the bow deck, slewing aft and 
wetting down everything, particularly the engine 
spark plugs, thereby stopping the motor. The 
ideal bow would rake forward somewhat and the 
sides would flare outward in a Y shape, fining 
down to the stem along and below the water line, 
and rounding in to the stem up at the deck level. 
Such a bow will ride many a wave without ship¬ 
ping water, while the straight stem would let it 
come aboard. 

A third point is protection for the engine. No 


196 


MOTOR BOATING 


matter what the water, you will need some sort of 
housing over the engine to keep off spray, rain, 
etc. Even with the patent waterproof spark plugs 
you will not want your high tension wiring wetted 
down, nor the flywheel flinging up rain in pin- 
wheels all over the boat. The covering for sea¬ 
going motor boats is generally a box hatch, with 
hooked sides and top so that it can be taken apart 
to get at the engine if it misbehaves. All you really 
need to get at most of the time are the carburetor 
throttle, the timer handle, and the main oil cup, 
and a box that nearly fits the engine will enable 
you to reach these through the top. The flywheel 
should project through the for’d end of the box 
to get at in cranking. With an engine mounted 
well forward, like the Adelaide’s, a pair of 
hatches, with hinges on the coaming so that they 
can be raised when starting the engine, is the most 
convenient rig. In both cases the box or hatch 
confines the noise of the engine, and all of them 
are more or less noisy, a nuisance in the long run! 
The advantage of an engine mounted well for¬ 
ward is that you can have more available room in 
your boat and a long easy slant to the shaft, get¬ 
ting the most of your thrust instead of losing a 
fraction of it as you do with an engine mounted 
aft with the shaft at a sharp slant. The disad- 



THE AUTHOR’S DEEP SEA CRUISER “GO-SUM” 

Built by himself on knock-down frames, this cruiser has been three hundred 
miles out on the Atlantic. 



THE AUTHOR'S LAKE LAUNCH “ADELAIDE” 

A narrow speed launch, good for lake service but too wet in a 
choppy sea. 























CHOOSING YOUR MOTOR BOAT 197 


vantage of mounting the engine forward is of 
course the difficulty of getting at the flywheel to 
crank her, and most of them are so rigged as 
to start with a rear starting device, simply a 
sprocket and chain with starting pawls on the 
sprocket which engage notches on the engine 
coupling plate when you are cranking the starting 
shaft. This turns the engine over, and, with the 
timer set a trifle back, you get a kick out of her, 
and, quickly advancing the timer, she gets up 
speed, after which the clutch can he thrown in. 
Another advantage of the forward-mounted en¬ 
gine is that you can buy a brass shaft log and 
screw it directly to your keel plank, with a long 
slot cut to pass the shaft. This construction is 
much easier for the amateur builder than to make 
a shaft log, get it fitted right to the deadwoods 
and calk and stopwater it properly. 

The next things to look at in a motor boat are 
the engine timbers. These take the whole thrust 
of the engine, and should be anchored to at least 
three ribs and their floor timbers to get a good 
hold on the boat. At no point should they touch 
the planking, for if they do the vibration of the 
engine will be transmitted to the planking and 
start it leaking. Good notches, with a reasonable 
bite over the floor timbers, are ample. On the 


198 


MOTOR BOATING 


timbers go the engine and clutch. The best 
foundation bolts for both are screws that are lag- 
screw threaded in the wood and machine-threaded 
for the nuts. Two of these machine nuts are first 
put on and jammed, and by them the lag-screw is 
driven home, after which the nuts can be backed 
off, one at a time, and the bolt studs are ready for 
the engine. When the latter has to be taken out 
of the boat for the winter, all you have to do is to 
unscrew the nuts and lift the engine off, a much 
better job than backing out a set of solid head lag- 
screws from the oak, where they have probably 
‘ 4 frozen’’ fast! 

As to having a clutch, most two-cylinder en¬ 
gines can be reversed with the timer and switch, 
if you know your engine. Even a single cylinder 
one can be so reversed by any boy who takes the 
time to learn the trick. You must know by the 
sound, or a mark on the flywheel, just when she is 
going over center, and the stunt is to throw off 
the switch, reverse the timer, and catch her with 
the switch again just when the upstroke begins, 
thus driving her backwards, when the timer will 
keep her going that way without further reversal. 
On a crowded lake, however, a reverse clutch is 
necessary, and generally required by police regu¬ 
lations. They cost from $20 up, according to the 


CHOOSING YOUR MOTOR BOAT 199 


size of the shaft, and for small boats one of the 
patent reversing propellers answers as well. 

In buying a second-hand boat, the thing needed 
is to find out how old the hull and motor are, and 
what abuse they have been through. If the hull 
has been left for a winter, submerged and at the 
mercy of ice and thaw, she will show it in leaky 
bottom, strained ribs and floor timbers, and half 
rotten condition of the bilge. Dig in here with 
your knife, trying garboard strakes, ribs, floor 
timbers and deadwoods for soundness. If rotten, 
the knife will go in easily; if sound, a cut of the 
knife will turn up a clean shaving. Try the seams; 
they should not be open more than a sixteenth 
inch at the end of a winter out of water, and 
should be uniform in the width of crack. Look 
out for wide spots, plugged with wads of calking 
and wooden splines, these are always leak points. 
Don’t buy an old, logy boat at any price; she isn’t 
worth fixing up; better spend the money on a 
knockdown frame and build one yourself. 

As to the engine, insist on seeing it opened to 
get some idea of the condition of the cylinder 
walls. A try at the crank, with priming cock 
closed, will give you some idea, for if the rings 
are tight you will get good compression and have 
to use a lot of force in getting her over center. 


200 


MOTOR BOATING 


Hold her nearly at center and note if she loses 
any compression; if the rings are leaky it will all 
soon “evaporate.’’ Well-oiled rings may fool 
you in turning over fast, but take your time and 
if the compression is not good it will soon fade 
away. The cylinder walls should show a bright, 
hard polish; beware of an old engine with the 
lathe marks still showing on the cylinder walls— 
she has been rebored and most likely the walls 
are now too thin for safety. When the engine is 
running, listen for any knocks in the piston and 
crank connecting rod pins, and don’t take any 
engine that shows any such knock. The seller 
might as well get these out of her before turning 
her over to you—the engine has been abused at 
some earlier time in its history, or she would not 
have them; most likely has been allowed to run 
out of oil, with the result of melting out the babbit 
in the bearings or burning them so that she now 
has a knock. It will get worse, so let him take up 
the wear himself and turn her over to you in per¬ 
fect condition. 

Take a good long run in her before you accept 
the boat, and note if any bad features develop. 
In the succeeding chapters we will tell you how 
to overhaul and take care of “Maud” (as the 
engine of the motor boat is usually called because 







































































































CHOOSING YOUR MOTOR BOAT 201 


of her likeness in character to a mule). Most 
engines get on without much trouble if you only 
feed them oil and gasoline properly and see that 
your electric current is on the job. 

Get a motor boat with fore and aft deck, and 
high coaming around the cockpit, or, if your pur¬ 
chase is an open launch, deck it yourself with a 
canvas deck. In a later chapter I will show you 
how to build a hunting cabin for it, and even on a 
twenty-foot boat such a cabin changes her from 
a mere day launch into a cruiser for boys that one 
can live a week in. And that’s where the fun 
comes in in a motor boat—getting somewhere! 
Without doubt you can go a great deal further 
than with a sail boat, partly because of having no 
necessity to tack, partly because of the boat being 
faster, but principally because calms and head 
storms impede you not! 

As I said once before, the cheapest way to 
own a really fine motor boat at a low price is to 
build it yourself, from knockdown frames and 
patterns. This sort of work is well within the 
ability of any enterprising youth from sixteen 
years up, and as one’s Saturdays out of school 
and numerous holidays throughout the winter give 
plenty of time, it will be a fine winter’s work and 
a good use for the Christmas money and other 


202 


MOTOR BOATING 


savings. Roughly the cost of a motor boat built 
this way is one-third the price of the same boat 
as put out by any reputable manufacturer. I built 
a 35-foot power cruiser, that went 300 miles out 
on the broad Atlantic, from knockdown frames 
for $700 complete, including engine, yet any boat 
of her class and size, manufactured by any good 
company, would cost not less than $2,200. There 
are several good makers of knockdown boats, and, 
as they all advertise freely, it is no trouble to get 
their catalogues and pick out the boat you want. 
Find out by correspondence whether your frames 
will come to you already set up and all beveled 
to fit the planking and then knocked down again 
and if not reject any proposal that will not guar¬ 
antee this. Some of them simply furnish rough- 
sawn stem, stern and keel, and a lot of ribs steam 
bent over one or two moulds, but not fitted or 
beveled, and these make you so much work and so 
much danger of getting a poor job, full of flats 
and out of true, that they will not pay to bother 
with. Other concerns set up the frame complete, 
bevel all the ribs true to fit the planking and then 
knock down and send to you, so all you have to 
do is to assemble it again, put in the bolts, drifts 
and stopwaters, and you are ready for the plank¬ 
ing. This insures a true hull, with no bad spots, 


CHOOSING YOUR MOTOR BOAT 203 


no poorly fitted main timbers, and a boat that will 
be as good in her foundations as any that ever 
left a shipyard. Such a frame was that of my 
Go Sum. In one single day two other fellows and 
myself assembled that frame complete and were 
measuring for the garboard planks, and that for a 
35-foot boat, the one described in the last chapter 
of this book. All the stern timbers, shaft log, etc., 
came assembled in one piece, and the stem ditto, 
with its scarf joints and dead wood already pinned 
together with heavy bolts, so all we had to do was 
to assemble the keel, bolt on stem and stern tim¬ 
bers, set up the frames (each of which came with 
a lath tacked across it so that it had to stay true) 
and put on the keelson. Then the holes were 
drilled for the through bolts, through keel, floor 
timbers and keelson, and, when the nuts for these 
were set up, our hull skeleton stood finished. The 
patterns came in long rolls like wall paper, and 
you cut them out and pasted on the boards (a fine 
lot of clear cypress that I picked up at 7 cents a 
square foot), and the planks were all sawed out at 
the mill in an hour and a half by a bandsaw man, a 
boy to feed the planks, and a nigger to carry away 
the finished work. I advise you to get yours 
sawn that way, for the job cost only a couple of 
dollars and saved many an hour of weary ripsaw- 


204 


MOTOR BOATING 


ing. We had work enough as it was, fitting those 
planks! It took eleven days of work to fit them 
all, put in the butt joints, calk the whole job, pay 
with white lead, and plane the skin smooth all 
over. Of course a boat of that size is a big job, 
as big as a small house, but on a smaller scale 
boats from fifteen to twenty-five feet have been 
successfully built by youths all over the country 
from frames and patterns on the knockdown sys¬ 
tem. Most of the cost of a boat is in the time 
spent by expert carpenters in fine finishing all 
over it, and much of this is equally staunchly (if 
not so finely) done by amateurs whose time is 
charged in as recreation—for it is fun puttering 
around a motor boat, believe me! And this is at 
the bottom of the success of the business of selling 
knockdown frames and patterns—your boat is a 
sure success, and not a ‘ 4 lemon’’ as she will most 
probably be if you attempt to design as well as 
build her yourself. When I was a boy we had no 
knockdown frames to start with, and some of the 
most fearful tubs ever conceived in the mind of 
man came right out of amateur shipyards in my 
home harbor town. They looked well to the eye; 
but as sailers they were nix!—any craft designed 
by a regular naval architect could sail circles 
around them! 


CHOOSING YOUR MOTOR BOAT 205 


A final word on the selection of your craft. If 
for deep-sea work, avoid the flat-bottomed type, 
whether round or skipjack; select the ancient 
standby of the men of the sea, a deep V-bottomed 
craft that will have plenty of grip on the water 
and will ride upright with plenty of ballast in her 
bottom. For lakes and bays, the flat-bottomed 
shoal-draft type will suit you better, will go faster, 
and, as there are no really big waves about, will 
not pound herself to pieces in a seaway. Low 
freeboard and small sheer, bow and stern, will an¬ 
swer for her; for the ocean type, plenty of free¬ 
board and plenty of sheer. In the knockdowns 
you will find both types well represented. 


CHAPTER n 


MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS 

“Souse my swashbuckets, but there’s a lot of 
fittin’s about a boat!” You won’t say this, you’ll 
groan it, before they’re all bought; and most of 
them have to be before she ever leaves the dock. 
Otherwise, next time you’re down Quarantine way 
you’re liable to run afoul of a fast launch with a 
queer flag full of vertical red and white stripes, 
and before you can manage to disappear she’ll 
give you the four toots, which signal you will do 
well to obey, for it says: “Heave to! We’re 
coming alongside to take out your works and see 
what makes you act so. This means YOU!” 
Presently two leathery officials in navy blue come 
over the side and begin to look around. “Let’s 
see ye ’re running lights ? Hev ye got any ? ’ ’ 

“Er,—no; but we’ve a cook for’d with one 
flaming red nose and two green eyes. Wouldn’t 
he do for a combination headlight if we stand him 

up in the bow and let him shut his port eye-” 

“One hundred, please. Got any life-preserv¬ 
ers?” 


206 



MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS 207 

“Stacks of it—in the ice-box; it’s all 
yours-” 

The inspector shakes his head and tries your 
whistle. “One-second squeak,’’ he mutters. “Got 
a fog horn?” 

“Sure thing! Jim, here, can heller like an Ala¬ 
bama coon when he-” 

“One hundred bucks-” 

“What!!” 

“I said ‘One hundred dollars’ fine!’ young man, 
for being at large without side lights, life-preserv¬ 
ers, a fog horn, and I don’t know what all be¬ 
sides. ’ 9 

(Long, panic-stricken pause.) 

“Here, officer—take my boat. She’s all I have 
in the world (sob), and as much as ten dollars 
couldn’t buy her-” 

Oh, it’s harrowing, but it’s much safer, to have 
all the fittin’s the law requires, besides a whole 
lot that the far sterner laws of the Sea insist 
upon—with your life as the penalty of being with¬ 
out them. It’s the most joyful thing in the world 
to be minus a compass in a thick fog, out of sight 
of land; it’s screamingly funny to have a canary- 
bird ’s-elaw anchor, with a roaring reef under your 
lee; it’s the height of hilarity to be under way in 
a nor’easter with no oil-skins and a four-hour 



208 


MOTOR BOATING 


watch ahead—bat one can he still happier with 
all these “fittin’s.” 

The principal trouble with fitting is—your 
pocket-book. By the time the boat is built or 
bought, you’re busted; so you venture out, shy 
a raft of commodities that you’ll get nabbed for 
not having, or else the Sea will want to know 
where they are in that curiously urgent way the 
Sea has of reminding you that your boat is ill- 
found. 

First, the anchor. I shouldn’t advise anything 
less than iy 2 pounds per foot of length of your 
boat, and 2 pounds, if she has high sides with ex¬ 
tension trunk cabin. Such a boat will usually 
gambol all around the anchor—playful to look at, 
but nervous business for the owner unless he 
knows the bower hook is big enough. If you are 
over 35 feet you need at least a 70-pound sheet 
anchor and a 50-pound stream anchor, the latter 
for ordinary cruising, as it is easy to heave, and 
the former for business purposes, when the real 
goods are blowing. And be sure you get a forged 
wrought iron anchor, not a malleable one; that is, 
for the regulation fluke-and-stock anchor. The 
stockless variety with swinging blades are of cast 
steel, but I do not care for them, preferring the 
old-fashioned kedge hook that was good enough 


SOME FITTINGS THAT THE MARINE LAW THE VIKING TYPE OF ANCHOR WINDLASS 

REQUIRES YOU TO HAVE Can bo operated with one hand. 






















































/1 





















MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS 209 


for Noah and Nelson and all those other primi¬ 
tive navigators. The forged anchor is easily rec¬ 
ognized by the hammer marks where the shank 
joins the crown and by the clean appearance of 
the flukes. If she is suspiciously smooth along 
the crown and the edges of the flukes are a little 
ragged and fringy, she’s a malleable, and old Nep 
will grin up his sleeve to see you buy her. I once 
rode out a bird of a nor’easter on a malleable 
anchor and it got the hook so deep in the sand 
that nothing but the engine would pull it up. 
When she came up on the bill-board the shank 
was trying to bite the ear of the port fluke, so 
bent was it, and, on attempting to straighten it, 
it parted just under the crown at the first tap of 
the blacksmith’s sledge. As we had had a neat, 
rocky shore under our lee all night, this scribe 
would have been by now playing jewsharps to the 
mermaids if that shank had parted down there in 
the sand. 

And, when you bend on your anchor rope, don’t 
forget to make fast the cotterpin which holds the 
anchor stock in place when set. It wants a short 
piece of galvanized chain closed around the stock 
so that the cotter will not plunk overboard the 
first time you take it out to fold in the stock of the 
anchor. 


210 


MOTOR BOATING 


Attached to the anchor is—rope. Have a chain 
if you prefer, but good manila for mine. Nothing 
less than 2 1 / 2 -inch (circumference) for any boat 
from 22 to 40 feet, and chain for the sheet anchor 
of the latter size. Secure it to the anchor ring with 
a fisherman ’s bend, which is simply two turns 
around the ring, across in front of the standing 
part of the rope, and under inside the turns around 
the ring. Pull taut and seize the end to the stand¬ 
ing part with a bit of marlin. You will need not 
less than 150 feet of anchor cable, as you may have 
to anchor in a 30-foot channel with a six-knot tide 
some day, and your scope should never be less than 
five times the depth. Then you want a stout %-inch 
eyebolt in the anchor post or windlass head to 
bend the bitter end of the cable to. If she once 
starts to go, nothing but that eyebolt will save the 
rope and anchor for you, for if you dare touch it 
you’ll go overboard like a skyrocket. A little 
windlass is necessary for any anchor over 75 
pounds, but the usual 40 to 60-pound anchor can 
be hoisted on deck by hand, and, to break it out, 
simply snub up short and start the engine, trip¬ 
ping the anchor, whereat you can easily gather it 
in. The cost of a good anchor is about twelve 
cents a pound. 

Both for’d and astern you need chocks for the 


MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS 211 


anchor cable. I used to get these in polished 
brass, but now, galvanized iron is plenty good 
enough, with a perennial coat of paint. The pol¬ 
ished brass chock is too much workful to keep 
looking like anything. Besides, these chocks will 
cost you about $4 for bow and stem sets in pol¬ 
ished brass. Before leaving the subject of an¬ 
chors in general I want to put in a word for the 
sea anchor. Some day you may need it; off sound¬ 
ings. Be sure that there is something in your 
boat like a grating, a stern sheet or what-not, that 
can be rigged as a sea-anchor in emergency. 
Make a bridle, attaching to three corners of this 
invention and weight one of the corners so it will 
float upright, while the bridle drags it vertically, 
broadside to, in the water. Bend the anchor cable 
to this bridle and get her over if the weather is 
thickening to wind’ard and the motor promises to 
be in for a three-hour balk. It will keep her head 
to the seas; and it may save something worse than 
an ugly rolling. Use the dink submerged if your 
power boat is large and the power minus for the 
nonce. 

The next “fittin’s” to look to are the running 
lights. The old rules used to taboo the combina¬ 
tion light. Even a green-eyed citizen, with a red 
nose was disallowed, but now motor boats under 


212 


MOTOR BOATING 


26 feet overall may carry them, provided that the 
former white light that used to be in the middle 
of the combination does not show. Boats of this 
size are also required to show a clear white light 
a foot higher than the green and red combination 
for’d, so that your boat must have a flag-pole 
socket astern and a pole with halliards for the 
lantern by night, and presumably your ensign by 
day. For motorboats from 26 up to 40 feet overall 
(deck measurement) four lights are required; 
green and red starboard and port side lights, in 
light screens, so fixed as to show the light from 
dead ahead to two points abaft the beam; a white 
light, placed as far for’d as possible, throwing an 
unbroken light ten points on each side of the ves¬ 
sel (dead ahead to two points abaft the beam on 
either side); a white light aft to show all around 
the horizon. This is also your anchor light, which 
must be shown from sunset to sunrise unless 
you happen to be an inner boat in an anchorage 
whose limits are already clearly lighted. If you 
get run down while at anchor without a light you 
are liable for all damages to the other fellow, be¬ 
sides the Government fine. All these lanterns 
must have fresnel glass lenses, which are fluted, 
with prisms inside, so that the flame appears as 
a long, bright bar of light when looking at it 



A POINT OF DANGER 

Oncoming: boat should port his helm to show “red to red.” 



TWO CYLINDER ENGINE WITH AUTOMATIC OIL FEED 






































































































I 














. 







































MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS 213 


from the water alongside. In the spitkit class 
under 26 feet, plain glass is allowed, but it makes 
a poor, discouraging, dangerous light to carry. 
A set of fresnel glass lanterns in polished brass 
will cost you about $12 for the four. Screens for 
side lights of motorboats above 26 feet must be 
18 inches long and above 60 feet, 24 inches long. 
The screens are usually painted red and green in¬ 
side, though the law does not expressly require it. 

The running rules on which the navigation laws 
are based have been made into rhymes by some 
forgotten poetical genius, and are well worth com¬ 
mitting to memory, for it is impossible to get them 
wrong, once learned that way; the meter will not 
jibe if you attempt to get port and starboard 
mixed up. 

Rule I. 

Meeting steamers do not dread 
If you see three lights ahead. 

Green to green, or red to red. 

Perfect safety, go ahead! 

Pretty and soothing, isn’t it? Especially the 
third line. Rule II covers the only dangerous 
situations afloat, and so it has quite a poem: 

Rule II. 

If to starboard red appear, 

’Tis your duty to keep clear; 

Port or starboard, back or stop her, 


214 


MOTOR BOATING 


Act as judgment says is proper. 

But if on your port is seen 
A vessel with a light of green 
There’s not so much for you to do. 

The green light must keep clear of you. 

The poet who wrote that was a genius. Take 
it apart, and I defy you to get any of it in wrong 
again and yet come out all right in your meter. 
These two rules cover about the whole subject of 
maneuvering at night except when overtaking an¬ 
other craft, in which case you must keep clear of 
him. Sail boats carry no white light, wherefore 
keep clear a single red or green light as all sail¬ 
boats have the right of way. Tugs carry two 
white lights hanging from the top of the flag pole 
for ordinary tows, three for tows 600 feet long or 
more. You can perceive by the above that “by 
their lights ye shall know them”—not only what 
the stranger is, but which way she is going. 

By day the rules of the road prescribe a cor¬ 
responding set of navigation signals; wherefore 
you will find the law requiring you to possess in 
good working order: a whistle or blast of two 
seconds’ duration; a fog bell; and a fog horn. 
(They used to call for four seconds’ blast* but 
even the 18-inch hand-whistle would peter out in 
about three seconds unless blown by an expert.) 
As sold, you get the hand-pump in polished brass 


MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS 215 


for $1.75 in the 12-inch length, and $3.50 in the 
18-inch, with the whistle stuck on an elbow at the 
bottom of the pump. This will not do, since the 
whistle has to be above the cabin roof to be both 
ornamental and useful; so the handiest place for 
the pump is to screw it to the cockpit floor just 
under the steering wheel with a brass %-inch pipe, 
running up the cabin panel to the roof, on which 
is screwed the whistle. This sailorman has no 
use for a chime, for the reason that three small 
whistles use up a good deal more air than one 
larger one. One bright spirit of my acquaintance 
has an air cylinder reservoir 2 feet long by 12 
inches diameter, with a check valve on it, through 
which his pump fills the reservoir with compressed 
air. A very respectable deep-voiced tugboat 
whistle connects to the reservoir and every one 
gives him a wide berth in a fog, not guessing by 
the whistles that it only belongs to an 18-foot 
motorboat instead of an ocean-going tug. The 
foghorn may be an ordinary tin fish-horn from 2 
to 3 feet long. Don’t blow it under way in a fog, 
unless your regular whistle is rusty or out of 
whack, for the other boats will take you for a sail 
craft, and it isn’t fair to give wrong impressions 
at sea. Your fog bell may be 6 inches across the 
mouth for motorboats up to 40 feet, but the 8-inch 


216 


MOTOR BOATING 


bell in polished brass is only $1.85, so by all means 
get it, no matter how small yonr craft. You'll ap¬ 
preciate it some day in a thick fog! And don't 
blow your horn and ring your bell at the same 
time, as Kipling makes his fishermen do in ‘ ‘ Cap¬ 
tains Courageous." The two signals mean two 
different things, under way and anchored, and are 
sure to get you into trouble if you sound them both 
at once. When under way at half speed in a fog 
blow a 4 ‘prolonged" blast (say, three seconds if 
the pump will let you) every minute. If anchored, 
ring the bell for five seconds once every minute; 
not oftener, as that would tell the other fellow that 
there are two of you, but right on the dot, timing 
it with your watch. 

In navigating by day, one blast of your whistle 
means, “I’m turning to starboard," or “Will pass 
you on your port." Two blasts:—“I’m turning 
to port," or “Will pass you on your starboard." 
Meeting obliquely, if you have the other fellow on 
your port you have the right of way. He should 
then give one blast saying that he is turning to 
starboard and will pass you to port. You answer 
with a single blast showing that you understand. 
If he wishes to cross your bow he will give two 
blasts, meaning he will turn to port. If you as¬ 
sent, two blasts give him the permission; if not, 


SHEER PLAN OF THE “GO-SUM 














































































MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS 217 

do not attempt to cross-signal or contradict—blow 
four short toots and slow your motor until both 
of you come to some agreement. He should at 
once slow down on hearing your alarm signal. 
Most harbor tugs will cross your bows even when 
you have the right of way, and few of them ask 
your permission. They feel that * 1 business is busi¬ 
ness” and you are out for pleasure, so it is not 
worth while getting stuffy about it. If in a dan¬ 
gerous predicament and you have reversed en¬ 
gines, give three blasts to let the other fellow 
know you have done so, and if you see any of his 
lights out at night give him the i 1 double-two , 99 or 
two short blasts, a pause, and then two more. It 
is not merely a courtesy, it is your duty. And if 
you hear the double-two, don’t gape around like a 
man paralyzed, but look to both your screens, 
your bow light and stern lantern, at once . It may 
mean you! 

All boats are required to carry life preservers, 
two sets of the harbor rules, and means for put¬ 
ting out gasoline fires. While the law regarding 
life preservers reads only for the hired launch, it 
worked backwards to the bonafide owner, as every 
hired launch immediately became 4 4 the owner and 
his friends,” so that in many harbors the inspec¬ 
tors were forced to require one life preserver to 


218 


MOTOR BOATING 


each person on all boats so as to reach the com¬ 
mercial launches. The sets of harbor rules are 
printed both in pamphlet form and as a framed 
document. For small boats up to 40 feet the pam¬ 
phlet form, kept in the chart drawer, will answer, 
but larger boats must frame and post up the har¬ 
bor rules in some conspicuous place in the chart 
room. As for a good gasoline extinguisher, you 
can get a dandy little tin sand squirt-can loaded 
with chemicals for a dollar, and there is no excuse 
for being without one. 

So much for the legal “fittin’s”—now for the 
equally important things that the Sea requires. 
First, good steering gear. There will come times 
when you will have to snake that boat around on 
her own tail with the seas driving you ashore and 
a rock-ribbed dock on either side of you, so don’t 
be niggardly about the size of the rudder. There 
is nothing more comfortable to a sailorman than 
a ship quick to mind her helm, one that will go 
the limit as regards turning on her own heel when 
she has to. About one square foot of rudder to 
every ten feet of length of your motorboat isn’t a 
bad rule of thumb. Have a good stout shoe run¬ 
ning out from the skeg to the heel of the rudder. 
The kind that are swung free look pretty, but you 
lose interest in them if some one backs the boat 


MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS 219 


against a bunch of rocks and jams the rudder 
forthwith. The tiller rope is best of red cord with 
steel wire insertion, for boats up to 35 feet. Be¬ 
yond this, chain or steel wire rope only. The 
red rope costs 6 to 8 cents a foot. Lead it 
through flat iron sheave blocks under the wash¬ 
boards, being sure that the sheaves are somewhat 
bigger than the rope and avoiding sharp bends 
out of the general plane of the sheaves. The 
steer wheel drum wants enough port and star¬ 
board turns of your rope on it to swing the rudder 
full each way without over-running the securing 
staple which anchors the rope on the drum. A 
good five-spoke polished brass wheel large enough 
for any boat up to 35 feet can be had for $1.75. 
It has a brass shoe which carries the axle and 
drum, and this shoe should be bolted to some stout 
panel where it will not pull out, no matter if you 
put on strain enough to nearly part the steering 
rope. You will, you know, some one of these days, 
so you might as well be prepared for it. 

The steering wheel should go on the port side 
of the cockpit. To me the wheel invariably sug¬ 
gests a compass, as one seldom sees the one with¬ 
out the other just in front of it, in a stout binnacle, 
screwed to the deck. For motor boats the best 
rig, to my mind, is a permanent compass mounted 


220 


MOTOR BOATING 


on one of the aft panels inside of the cabin, with 
a pane of glass so that the skipper at the wheel 
outside can see it day and night by simply glancing 
through his binnacle pane. This is also the cheap¬ 
est rig, and one which you can feel reasonably 
certain will stay well lighted and be protected 
from the weather, which the small brass binnacle, 
with its dinky lamp, will not stay or be. Assuming 
that you elect to locate your compass in a perma¬ 
nent box on the aft port cabin panel, set the rhumb 
line true fore and aft and screw the fixture in 
place just under the panel window pane. The 
rhumb line is a fixed black line which you will find 
inside the bowl of the compass and represents the 
fore and aft center-line of the ship with respect to 
the rotating compass card. By the rhumb line 
you lay your course in degrees and minutes on the 
card as taken off your chart bearing. Simply keep 
your rhumb line on the point on the card which 
represents your bearing and you will ‘ ‘ arrive.’ ’ 
In almost any cruise you will need a set of 
charts covering the various landfalls you will 
make, giving all buoys, lights, soundings, etc. By 
writing to the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey 
you can get a book giving all the charts for the 
Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coast lines. These are 
numbered and you order the ones you want from 


MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS 


221 


the diagram maps in the book. The charts cost 
about 50 cents apiece and are very complete and 
up to date. If your boat draws any water at all, 
do not attempt to go beyond the limits of your 
chart without picking up the course on another. 
We once tried that on a river showing only five 
miles back from the harbor chart. Fifteen years 
before I had often navigated that river so I fol¬ 
lowed the old bend regardless of the fact that 
many a large schooner was now sailing down some 
new channel cut through the marsh. I didn ’t know 
where the new channel went, but I was sure of the 
bend, so I followed the familiar old course. Sud¬ 
denly there was a crash for’d and our cruiser 
hurdled up into the air. Something solid drummed 
along our keel and out astern, and we found our¬ 
selves afloat in that new channel with our rudder 
jammed fast. We had hurdled clear over a sheet 
piling breakwater, two feet below water at mean 
low tide, with our 35-foot cruiser going ten knots 
an hour. A tap on the rudder with a machinists 
hammer freed it and we got under way again, but 
it was a ticklish business thereafter without any 
chart! 

As stated before, the chart gives soundings at 
mean low tide, in fathoms in white waters and in 
feet in stippled shoals and shore beaches. Where- 


222 


MOTOR BOATING 


fore, in picking out your anchorings in a cruise be 
very sure to take the tide into account and allow 
at least four feet under your keel at dead low tide. 
This is because if any sea gets up you will touch 
at the trough of every wave and pound the skeg 
off her unless you have at least a few feet clear 
below it in still water at low tide. To get your 
depth you need an exceedingly important little 
item of equipment, the “dipsey lead” which is 
“tar” for the deep sea sounding plummet. A 
seven-pound billet will do for any motor boat. 
Bend on it a length of stout braided “banks” line 
and let it be at least fifty feet long, as there will 
come times when you have got to put down the 
hook in mid-channel and hence will be curious 
about the depth. For taking anchorage or “feel¬ 
ing your way” soundings, stand up on the star¬ 
board bow and swing the lead out into the pickle, 
about twenty feet ahead, using an underhand 
swing. Don’t attempt to whirl the lead in grand 
circles as you’ve seen them do on big ships going 
seven or eight knots in five fathoms of water. 
You’ll only hang the plummet on some innocent 
bystander’s ear, and will make a landlubberly ex¬ 
hibition of yourself in general. It isn’t easy to 
heave the lead like an old salt. No trouble about 
the other stunt! 


MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS 223 


Mark your lead line in feet, with a brass clip at 
two feet below your boat’s draught, a red flannel 
rag at 10 feet, a white bunting rag at 15 feet, a 
leather tag at 20 feet, etc. There is no use adopt¬ 
ing the regulation nautical markings of the lead 
line as they are far too coarse and too deep to 
be of much use for a motor boat. The different 
tags, however, are good to adopt as they show 
the depth as well by night as by day. You can 
easily feel the difference in the tags and measure 
the exact point on the line from the nearest tag 
with your arm even on dark nights. 

A highly important but not much appreciated 
“fittin’ ” (before launching) is the bilge pump. 
First, when your boat is being built, see that the 
lead holes (“limbers”) under the ribs fore and aft 
are all clear and have not gotten choked up with 
chips and sawdust. Choose a handy point for the 
bilge well and have a permanent bilge pump put in 
near it with a permanent suction to the well and a 
discharge overboard. No well-built motor boat 
should leak much, but as they gradually grow old 
they leak a little more every year; and the stern 
gland of the screw shaft lets in more or less water 
throughout the season, since its packing will get 
worn and hard. It is well worth while, to simply 
have to work a handle whenever a peep at the 


224 


MOTOR BOATING 


bilge well tells you that she has made a few inches 
of water. The little brass bilge pumps sold for 
motorboats throw a wonderfully voluminous jet 
of water,—out of a clear, clean pailful of it. But 
handling dirty bilge-water is another matter, and 
these pumps usually stick before the first ten 
strokes are made. Then there is nothing for it 
but unscrew the pump and get the chip or grit out 
from under the ball check-valve, or else free the 
ball itself, which often sticks on its seat. Put it 
together again, and observe how nicely it will stick 
once more in the next three strokes. Besides 
which, some one has to hold the rubber hose over 
the side or else it is sure to squirt on the boat 
cushions, and another boy will have to put in time 
holding down your temper for you while you 
struggle with the pump. 

Under the head of fixtures and fitting comes the 
signal mast and the awning. The signal mast is 
a very natty and handy addition to any motor 
boat, but nothing will make you look more like a 
landlubber, a gardener, and a cabbage-planter 
than a signal-mast badly stepped, badly raked, or 
improperly stayed. Wherefore make a scale 
drawing of your boat and experiment with a pen¬ 
cil and rubber as to height and step of your signal- 
mast before cutting any holes for it. It wants a 



OPEN 25-ft. launch with hunting cabin added 










CABIN AND DECK SECTION OF THE 

“go-sum” 


BENDING THE PLANK FOR THE 
HUNTING CABIN 










































































MOTOR BOAT FITTINGS 


225 


neat yard arm hung in a rope bridle above the 
shroud withe, and the permanent halliard pulley- 
blocks are at either end of the yard. Your club 
flag may fly from the starboard block on the yard¬ 
arm, with blue peter on bow pole and yacht ensign 
astern; or else the house flag takes the yard arm, 
the club flag, the bow pole, and the ensign the 
stern. The port pulley-block is for signalling. 

As regards the awning, let it come forward 
over the extension trunk cabin by all means, as 
even a foot of cool shade under the awning will 
keep the cabin from becoming a sweatbox. All 
the awning rail equipment should be stout and 
securely bolted to the deck, as it is the very thing 
which collides most frequently with dock string 
pieces, sail crafts bow-sprits, steam-yacht boat- 
booms, etc. A good rig is of one-half-inch gal¬ 
vanized piping, forming a hand-rail clear around 
the awning with short 16-inch stanchions to the 
cabin deck and long ones to the main deck around 
the cockpit. The awning is a few inches short of 
this rail all around, so that it can be stretched taut 
by a lashing around the rail. This latter should 
stop a foot back from the edge of the cabin eaves, 
so as to provide a runway for*d and should leave 
at least seven feet of clear deck for’d to give room 
for handling the anchor gear. 


CHAPTER III 


CABIN AND INTERIOR FURNISHINGS 

People seem to think that yon shouldn’t have a 
cabin on a boat unless you can stand up in it. It 
isn’t so. I’ve seen the time in a thunderstorm in 
an open boat when I would have been glad to have 
had a stove-pipe to crawl into, let alone a standing 
cabin. You want shelter and you want it cosy, 
so you can sleep in it if you wish to cruise for a 
few days. It is no privation not to be able to 
stand up in it, as your living-room on a small boat 
is the open cockpit. You go into the cabin to sleep 
or get in out of the moist, or, maybe, shake up a 
light meal on a small yacht stove for’d under the 
bow deck. But the rest of the time you are taking 
it easy, or steering her, or fishing —out in the 
cockpit . 

Wherefore, do not make the cabin a monstrosity 
for the sake of height. You need at least 5 feet 
8 inches to stand upright, but such a cabin on a 
25-foot boat will make a first-cousin to Noah’s 
ark out of her, and it will spoil her looks if the 

crown of the roof goes over 4 feet 6 inches from 
226 


CABIN FURNISHINGS 


227 


the floor. But, in good proportions the boat 
simply looks like a miniature power cruiser and 
is a cute little trick in spite of her infinitesimal 
size. 

The easiest way to put on a cabin is to follow the 
lines of the cockpit coaming already on the boat. 
This usually runs about three to six inches clear 
above the deck and will stand a single ten-inch 
oak or ash plank on top of it. Don’t attempt to 
bend this in place. Get out nine neat oak risers 
of %-inch dressed stock, 2 y 2 inches wide by 18 
inches long, and screw them to the inside of the 
coaming, first bevelling the latter with a plane so 
that its top edge slants down outwards all around. 
The uprights will later have to be notched to re¬ 
ceive the ends of the roof carlines. The ash plank 
should not be over half an inch thick,—they will 
dress it down at the mill for you,—and should 
be bevelled on the bottom edge to fit the coaming 
before bending. The plank itself must be sawed 
to match the shear of the coaming. Take a light 
batten and run it around the tops of your uprights, 
tying in with marline and adjusting until you get 
a pretty profile to the eave of the cabin roof. It 
will be found that this line looks best about par¬ 
allel to the waterline or sloping a couple of inches 
up at the after end. Lay the heights out on the 


228 


MOTOR BOATING 


plank, as taken on the uprights from the batten 
down to the coaming top. If you have not enough 
to get a good curve with this spiling batten, put 
up a few extra sticks temporarily, thus getting the 
distance from your eave batten down to the coam¬ 
ing top and transferring to the plank. When all 
is done you will have a symmetrical curve shading 
off each way from the center of the plank from 
about two inches above the bottom edge in the mid¬ 
dle to nothing at the ends. Rip this line with the 
saw and bevel to fit the coaming, and you are 
ready to bend. The plank may have to be steamed, 
especially if there is much shear to the cockpit 
coaming. Bend with the straight edge of the plank 
down, and around a set of chocks laid out as in 
the illustration around the circle of the coaming 
chalked on a level floor. Two men and a boy can 
persuade the plank around these chocks, and, once 
in place, hold her with diagonal and cross braces 
with small outside cleats on them. These take the 
outward thrust of the plank, while a light nail 
driven down into the edge of the plank will keep 
it from getting away. Don’t attempt to hold the 
plank in place with nails driven into the edge of 
the plank alone or they will surely rip out and 
ruin the plank. Better also tie the business ends 
of the plank with a rope, passing clear around 


CABIN FURNISHINGS 


229 


both ends, as there is forty mule-power stored in 
that bent plank, and she will spread the whole 
family over a ten-acre lot if she once gets away 
from the braces. This done you can transfer it to 
the coaming and screw fast to all the uprights, 
taking off one brace at a time and beginning with 
the for’d uprights. Run in some white lead putty 
all around the bevel before setting on the cabin 
sides, and have a couple of carpenter’s adjustable 
clamps handy to draw it down snug at each up¬ 
right before screwing fast. 

The plank will come about eighteen feet long, 
and as eight feet nine inches is about right for 
total length of a hunting cabin for a 24-foot boat 
over all, you will need about two feet added to 
each end of it on the sides. This joint ought to 
come in the center of an upright butting the plank 
and the addition on it. Clean and varnish the 
plank before the weather gets at it and you are 
then ready for the roof. On a boat of this size, 
about four feet six inches clear across the coam¬ 
ing inside is all the room you will have if the 
craft is at all speedy. Therefore, a six-inch crown 
to the roof carlines will be plenty. You need one 
every two feet, or five in all, and the best way to 
get them is to have the mill saw them out for you 
from a iy 2 x 12-inch white oak plank. The lower 


230 


MOTOR BOATING 


faces should be planed and an ornamental bead 
put on with a beading plane. The carline ends are 
tenoned to fit the mortise in your uprights and 
are snapped into place, securing with a brass pin 
passing through mortise and tenon. The best roof 
is half-inch yellow pine tongue-and-groove wains¬ 
coting, about four inches wide, with a false bead in 
the center of each strip. Begin with the middle 
plank, working each way to the outside, and leave 
considerable overlap on the last carline astern, as 
there is a good deal of trim and door fitting to go 
there. Trim the job carefully with a saw and you 
are then ready for the roof canvas. This is 10- 
ounce duck, which should be sewed on the machine 
before tacking down. Do not attempt to tack the 
seams to the deck instead of sewing. It will surely 
shrink in bows between the tacks if you do. Use 
four-ounce copper tacks and lap the canvas three- 
quarters of an inch over onto the sides of the cabin 
all around, driving the tacks into the edges of the 
ceiling planks. The copper tacks have a provok¬ 
ing way of turning and curling over under the 
canvas if they do not happen to start in just right. 
It will save time, tacks and troubles with the re¬ 
cording angel to keep a bradawl handy, slung to 
your wrist, and start each tack with a preliminary 
jab of the bradawl. Be sure and tack the aft end 


CABIN PLAN AND ELEVATION OF THE “GO-SUM 






















































































































































































































I it* BKww HR i 





t * 























































CABIN FURNISHINGS 231 

of the roof canvas over the ends of the ceiling 
plank, even though you know very well that you 
are going to take it up later. When that roof 
paint goes on, the canvas will shrink faster and 
farther than Hiram’s sheenie shirt, and woe unto 
you if the aft end of it is free! 

“Nor all your piety nor wit 
Can lure it back to gain 
A single inch of IT!” 

The canvas will need three coats of paint. 
Don’t paint it sky blue,—it won’t match the brand 
overhead; nor sea-green, for there’s some of that 
also in a pail over the side. And don’t try con¬ 
trasty effects in hot-time-in-the-old-town reds, or 
passionate purples. The Sea don’t like it and 
won’t stand for it. There are plenty of other 
colors, so I leave it to you. 

Cover the lap of the canvas with a trim of 1 %- 
inch oak half round beading along the eave of the 
cabin. Have this beading good and thick, and not 
flat, so that the run-off from your roof will drip 
out on the washboards and not run down the cabin 
sides and streak them. It should also be puttied 
and varnished as soon as on, for the way that, 
even galvanized nails have of staining oak in the 
weather is really marvelous. 

To close in the aft end of the cabin, let in a 


232 


MOTOR BOATING 


filler of %-inch oak about 6 inches wide under the 
washboards so as to bring down the line of the 
sides plumb to the floor of the boat. A 20-inch 
door is wide enough, so that two 16-inch panels, of 
4-inch frames and 8-inch panel, will answer for 
sides with a jamb of 2%-inch by %-inch double- 
rounded moulding running up each side from floor 
to carline for the doorway. You can make up the 
side and door panels yourself, with dowelled or 
mortised oak frames and panel boards screwed to 
back, or, better, have a door-and-sash mill run 
them out for you. After screwing the side panels 
to carline and floor, and dowelling them into the 
fillers under the washboards, you are ready for 
the door sill and eave trim of the after end of the 
cabin. The trim should be a piece of heavy OG 
moulding, bent and screwed to the side panels and 
to a filler on the carline at the door. It should lie 
flat under the ceiling planks. These can now be cut 
off short enough to stop back of the turn of the 
OG, sufficiently to permit a quarter-round beading 
to be let in. Pull up the canvas and nail the ceiling 
boards to the OG trim, then tack the canvas over 
the ends of the ceiling boards, cover with the bead¬ 
ing and finish with plane, sandpaper and varnish. 

You will note that there is no cabin hatch. I 
can’t see the use of such an expensive thing, unless 


CABIN FURNISHINGS 


233 


you have a high, self-bailing cockpit and a ladder, 
as on a sail sloop. But, in a small motor boat with 
cockpit and cabin floor, practically the same thing, 
the reason for the companion-way hatch vanishes. 
Better put on a low skylight from which you can 
get light and ventilation. A doorsill about three 
inches high will be needed, however, to have the 
door swing free, and this should next be put on 
in 3-inch by 1%-inch oak, mortised into the door 
jambs. The doors are then swung with concealed 
hinges, a bolt on one door, top and bottom, and an 
inside lock with keyhole; an Act for the Dis¬ 
couragement of River-Pirates, so to speak. With 
such a cabin you can cruise over night at pleasure, 
and, when thunderstorms fret the landscape, you 
will not be out in the wet looking for that dear old 
lady with a small fortune, an umbrella and no 
life-preserver. 

The first thing in the way of furnishings will be 
port lights. Don’t be inveigled into building them 
in, in hermetically sealed glass, or the cabin will 
have about the same temperature as a hen-incuba¬ 
tor, which is 103 or thereabouts. You can get five- 
inch portholes of plain brass for $2 apiece at any 
motor boat supply house in New York. They cost 
about five dollars each in polished brass, but will 
quickly get rusty and green unless you keep after 


234 


MOTOR BOATING 


them continuously. Somehow, polishing portholes 
lying flat on the cabin roof with the blood rushing 
to one’s head doesn’t compare with the peaceful 
joys of camping out beside a bross chock or cleat 
with your putz box and polishing rags. Don’t get 
the portholes too big, or your boat will look like a 
battery of sea-serpent’s eyes, and don’t think of 
making them yourself. Some of the most fearful 
things seen on the sea are the home-made port¬ 
holes now and then encountered on motor boats. 

For a cabin nine feet long, five portholes are 
plenty,—two on each side and one amidship for’d. 
There are two ways to put them on,—either cut 
neat round holes with carefully rounded edges (if 
you can do it I’ll give you a ship’s biscuit), and 
screw the porthole flange on the inside; or else cut 
a round hole with a compass saw and cut in 
notches for the hinge and screw fastener, putting 
the porthole plate on outside. If you elect the 
latter be careful about cutting notches too freely, 
as there is little to spare for the flange to cover 
the corners of the hinge notch especially. Each 
porthole needs a little ball-fringe curtain. While 
a certain amount of individual taste is permissible 
about a yacht, there is no place where form and 
precedents in things nautical count for so much. 
Every object of utility aboard a yacht must go in 


CABIN PLAN OF A LARGE OCEAN-GOING CRUISER 

















































































































































CABIN FURNISHINGS 


235 


just such a place, and will look queer if an inch 
out of it. Ball fringes on yacht curtains seem to 
be one of these nautical fetishes in small things, 
so by all means let’s have ’em, even if the curtain 
be smaller than a pocket handkerchief! As a 
matter of fact two green silk porthole curtains are 
just about the size of a small pocket handkerchief, 
but they are a necessity for a’ that. Run them in 
pairs on light brass rods with square hooks and 
knobs at the rod ends. Some yachts have single 
porthole curtains, but they look better and are 
less in the way of the portlight if divided. 

Having a nine-foot cabin, what shall we do with 
the interior? The unthinking will at once run a 
wood seat along each side and put cushions 
thereon,—but not you. Consider your feet, how 
they grow. Is there any reason why they should 
be permitted to occupy the precious cabin space 
during your slumbers? Shove ’em up under the 
bow deck. In other words run the berth under the 
forward deck at least two feet. As the total length 
of the berth will be about six feet eight inches, 
the end of it will come only four feet eight inches 
into the cabin, leaving a clear space in front of 
four feet. This room is more valuable than it 
looks. For instance, you can use twenty inches 
on each side to put in low cabinets about two feet 


236 


MOTOR BOATING 


high, with paneled sides and hinged, polished tops. 
In one is the yacht toilet, and the other carries a 
yacht basin under the hinged top, while the galley 
stove and “kitties’’ are kept in the lower part. 
The wall space behind is available for a mirror, a 
shaving case or what-not. You still have two 
feet four inches left of clear floor space near the 
door, and I don’t know of any better use to put 
it to than to locate there a couple of comfortable 
folding campchairs with side arms; shallow lock¬ 
ers, built in here under the coaming, will give you 
a flush wall surface. 

As to the all-important matter of berths, the 
writer has investigated and tried a rich selection 
of patent devices, from folding mattresses to pipe 
berths. It is hard to beat, for comfort or cheap¬ 
ness, a permanent berth built right into the boat 
with a heavy canvas bottom. It may also be a 
good scheme to plant a colony of bed-springs 
under the canvas to make it bulge upward, instead 
of stretching it taut, but an ordinary excelsior 
mattress with cotton top is cheaper and don’t 
need any springs under the canvas bottom. You 
can get the 24-inch mattress for $2.50 single-faced, 
or double with cotton on each face so as to be 
reversible for about $4, or all wool felt in green 
cloth for $2.75. Get the “wimmin folks” to put a 


CABIN FURNISHINGS 


237 


cover of green velveteen on the mattress,—or tur¬ 
key red if you like that better,—and put in the 
buttons yourself with an upholstering needle. 

Now as to the building of the berths. You 
really don’t need but 23-inch width for a comfort¬ 
able berth and you will find that the boat fines 
away for’d so that there will be less than eighteen 
inches where your pedal ends come. It’s more 
than enough however,—your feet aren’t your 
shoulders,—and the 24-inch mattress will go in 
that berth as nice as a cotton hat, as it will be 
just about right at the 23-inch ends and will easily 
thicken up to fit in the 18-inch end without any 
persuasion at all. This disposition of berths will 
give you a foot and a half of runway between the 
berths,—plenty,—“thousandths!” as my mechan¬ 
ical friends would say. To make the berths, get 
out a plank of %-inch red oak eight inches wide, 
nail on a trim % x 2i/ 2 -inch round-edge oak 
moulding, projecting an inch above the top of the 
board, and also a bottom trim of 3 x %-inch 
beaded or coved oak. Mitre and join to make the 
aft corner of the berth, and trim to fit snug against 
the skin of the ship in behind a rib. Make two of 
these berth sides and ends, and screw them in 
place to cleats in the floor, running the sides par¬ 
allel to the centerline of the ship and leaving 


238 


MOTOR BOATING 


about eighteen inches between them. The front 
ends under the bow deck can be closed in with any 
old pieces of board. Now run in a strip of %-inch 
by 1%-inch red oak along the ribs inside the berth, 
and it is ready for the canvas bottom. Tack this 
on with double folded hem and 20-ounce galvan¬ 
ized tacks spaced not over three inches. Varnish 
the sides and ends and you are ready for the cush¬ 
ions. It makes a very comfortable berth, and if 
you elect to have the galley and toilet cabinets 
you can dispense with the berth ends and run the 
sides into the cabinets. As they project about a 
foot above the berth they make a good corner for 
the pillow, or, maybe, for that sofa-cushion that 
your best girl has contributed to ‘‘ the boat .’ 1 

For larger boats, running from 30 to 40 feet, 
the amount of room usually wasted by the aver¬ 
age builder is astonishing. Arrangements that 
would be obvious to the intelligence of a frog are 
sacrificed to make a little foolish alleyway or to 
box in the “stateroom”; they hide the engine in 
some cubby-hole where only an eel can work at it, 
and put the toilet most anywhere but up in the 
bow where it belongs. Yet out of a 35-foot boat 
with extension trunk cabin you can get the follow¬ 
ing “improvements”: From for’d aft,—anchor 
locker, 4 ft. 6 in.; toilet, with skylights and two 


CABIN FURNISHINGS 


239 


portholes, 4 ft.; galley, 3 ft.; stateroom, 6 ft. 6 in.; 
engine-room and launch cabin, 7 ft. 8 in.; cockpit, 
5 ft.; stern deck, 4 ft. 4 in. Yet this type of boat 
is generally found with a long row of peek-hole 
port lights on each side, and nothing inside but 
two long wooden seats with bullet-proof cushions 
on them, which are only a little softer than a moss- 
grown boulder. The thing has more berth-room 
than she really needs; it ’s too hot to stay in there 
except some time after midnight; and the engine 
is boxed off from the main cabin with the laudable 
intention of keeping it from roasting out the rest 
of the boat. Is she beyond redemption to let a 
little coolth and some elbowroom into her! Not 
exactly. The engine will not get the boat hot if 
you put on a skylight over it, and provide good 
portholes. The room around it is worth going 
after. To the woods with the adamant seats and 
the engine-room rabbit-hutch. Set off six feet six 
inches from your forward cabin partition and put 
in a couple of panels, making a stateroom of this 
space with a 20-inch door. See that this room gets 
two portholes on a side, and build in permanent 
berths on each side with clothes-drawers under 
them. You have left a large main saloon aft, with 
the engine in the middle of it, and can run hard 
or soft seats along the sides as you prefer. If to 


240 


MOTOR BOATING 


change the portholes here to larger size would 
spoil the looks of the boat, change them to the 
oval shape to get more ventilation. The cockpit 
floor in these boats is generally higher than the 
main floor, so as to be above the water-line, and 
self-bailing. For this reason a small roof hatch 
is generally necessary, though if there is not too 
great difference between the two floors it can be 
dispensed with, as in the smaller boats. 

For interior furnishings of the main saloon you 
want ball-fringe curtains on brass poles, in pairs, 
at each large porthole or window, and one in the 
stateroom door. A nine-foot runner rug in the 
stateroom, extending out as far as the engine in 
the main saloon, will also add to cosiness and com¬ 
fort. The best floor for the main saloon is plain 
green 12-ounce duck canvas, tape bordered. Both 
carpets should be easily taken up, as they will oc¬ 
casionally get 4 ‘ some ’’ damp, and need a sun bath, 
or else the boat will get damp and mouldy. Two 
brass yacht lamps in swinging gimbals with 
smoke-guards overhead should be screwed to the 
aft panels of the cabin. A ship’s clock and an 
aneroid put on the corresponding panels at the 
for’d end of the cabin lend a nautical air to the 
cabin which ought to make a pickled herring out 
of the greenest tyro on his very first trip! 


CHAPTER IV 


YACHT PLUMBING 

Thebe are six rules for doing plumbing aboard 
a yacht, the first of which is: Don't do it your¬ 
self. Forget the rest. If you can hire a yacht 
plumber to put it in for you, by all means do 
so. Otherwise—better take a course of contor¬ 
tionist and angleworm exercises to get in training 
for the job. Also cultivate the fine arts of manipu¬ 
lating an eighteen-inch pipe wrench with your left 
hand and no room to work it in; of wiping a red- 
hot lead joint without leaving most of the skin of 
your fingers adhering thereto; and of fitting three 
ells into a space too small for a one-inch nipple. 
All connections to plumbers' fittings are of lead 
pipe and brass nipple, and each calls for a wiped 
joint, made with a hot-blast torch, a pound of lead 
and four tons of hard feelings. You are lucky if 
the torch doesn't start something in some cranny 
of the boat where you can't get at it to put the 
fire out 

Nor can you take these things out into a vacant 

241 


242 


MOTOR BOATING 


lot so as to make them up and then put them into 
the boat—for a variety of reasons. It isn’t done, 
that’s all. For instance: the toilet requires two 
connections to the skin of the ship, both below 
waterline (so get them in before launching as you 
love your pocket-book). The first is to the syphon 
check-valve and is a piece of two-inch D-weight 
lead pipe. Cut a hole for it in the skin of the 
ship about three inches below waterline and bell 
the end of the pipe, passing it from outside after 
crooking it properly to meet the brass toilet con¬ 
nection. This latter can be unscrewed and set 
either one of two ways, so you are not tied down 
to starboard or port, but in general it is best to 
come out of the connection with a bend and cross 
to the opposite side of the boat so as to get a man¬ 
ageable length of pipe. If too short you will have 
endless trouble with it. After bending it so it 
fits, punch holes all around the edge of the bell 
outside and nail it temporarily in place with a 
couple of copper nails. You are now ready to 
“wipe” the joint, and before I get very far with 
the directions you will be ready to fade away and 
let a yacht plumber get at it. The “wiper,” from 
which the joint gets its name, is a thick pad of 
drilling cotton or bed-ticking about four inches 
square. You now stand on your ear and hold the 



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YACHT PLUMBING 


243 


pad against the side of the joint, while your helper 
lets a pile of hot solder drop on it until you have 
quite a cake of it in a more or les mushy state 
resting between the pad and the joint. Then the 
joint is given a painting with acid and you plaster 
this mushy mass of hot solder around it with the 
wiper. It will chill instantly so you will have to 
go after it with the torch, and here’s where your 
judgment and experience comes in, for if you give 
it too much heat the whole cake will drop into the 
bilge and set it afire, and if too little heat the cake 
will not be plastic enough and will break away 
from the joint when you attempt to mould it into 
a smooth job, fitting all around. However, with 
patience, persistence and much wiping with the 
pad, you will have a fairly presentable job— 
maybe. But the chances are that, being a green¬ 
horn at it, you will have gone black in the face 
with rush of blood to the head, the boat will be 
afire, and you will have dropped dead into the 
solder-pot. After the joint is wiped, if you are 
still alive, go around outside and finish nailing the 
bell of the pipe to the rind of the boat, using 1-d 
copper nails with heads almost touching and a 
liberal smear of white lead putty in under the bell. 
The water-pump connection to the toilet is similar 
to the waste-pipe connection, except that it is 


244 


MOTOR BOATING 


made with three-quarters inch lead pipe, and its 
inlet should be protected with a copper strainer 
and located not less than seven inches below the 
waterline. As to layout of the yacht toilet and 
galley plumbing, if you are fortunate enough to 
be able to plan the interior arrangements of your 
own cruiser, or can specify what you want, when 
she is building, the first requirement would be to 
cut down the room allotted to the galley a great 
deal more than what is usually thought necessary. 
You don’t want too much room; and it is far bet¬ 
ter spent on the toilet room, which is usually so 
crowded as to be little more than a coop. If the 
cruiser is about thirty feet long, the toilet is best 
put just aft oi the anchor-locker, and the space 
allotted to it is often hardly larger than a mere 
seat. Aft of this comes the galley, which is some¬ 
times made as long as five feet. Now, every inch 
of length of the cruiser must count for the most 
possible,—here are two whole feet of length which 
are much better added to the cockpit, or to 
the bathroom. This latter should not be much less 
than 3 feet 10 inches long, should have two port¬ 
holes and a skylight of its own; a white enamel 
corner wash-basin; and a complete nickel-plated 
set of bathroom fixtures, besides the toilet. The 
last has a hand-pump, and must be of the “yacht’’ 


YACHT PLUMBING 


245 


typ e , or you will get flooded out through seas 
coming in through the siphon. It should have an 
oak or mahogany seat with a cover, so that one 
can sit on it with cover down when shaving, wash¬ 
ing face and hands and such details of personal 
cleanliness. The corner basin, right at one’s 
hand, with soap-fixture, towel-rack and mirror 
fastened to the opposite panel, gives one all the 
comforts and conveniences that such matters 
should have, and the abundant light from port¬ 
holes and skylight is just what you need so as to 
start the day with precisely such a general over¬ 
hauling of your face and scalplock as you would 
have in your own home. In my boat the bathroom 
is enameled throughout with white furniture 
enamel, and the skipper begins each day with a 
plunge overboard, followed by a shave, scrub, 
combing out the hurrahs-nest, and holystoning all 
teeth in the bright, sunny bathroom, breezy and 
glorious with the reflections of the rising sun. 

The skylight over the bathroom should extend 
to cover about ten inches of the galley, which lat¬ 
ter has no portholes and is only three feet long all 
told. Its floor will be four inches higher than the 
stateroom, because the boat fines so much for¬ 
ward, and the floor of the bathroom is still six 
inches higher than this, so that one must sit down 


246 


MOTOR BOATING 


in the latter or else have one ’s head poked up into 
the skylight hatch. In the galley one will have to 
stoop a trifle, but it is never a noticeable hardship. 
The absence of portholes in the galley is princi¬ 
pally because of the unshipshape appearance out¬ 
side if there are too many portholes crowded 
closely together. By omitting them a symmetrical 
arrangement of portholes along the sides of the 
ship is attained, and it must be so; for if there is 
any place where things simply have to be precisely 
according to regulations it is aboard anything 
calling itself a yacht. In actual practice the sky¬ 
light gives all the ventilation and light needed, 
especially when aiding it by pulling back the cur¬ 
tain of the bathroom door. In passing, it may 
be well to note that doors anywhere aboard a 
small power cruiser are a snare and a nuisance. 
Always use curtains on brass poles, with brass 
rings and yacht ball-fringe edging. 

In the galley you need, first of all, a good oil¬ 
cloth or rubberoid imitation parquetry floor. It 
wants scrubbing after every meal, just as you 
would scrub the kitchen table, and a wooden floor 
soon gets hopelessly bespotted with grease spots 
and general dirt, no matter how nicely matched 
and varnished it may have been originally. A 
cheerful white and light-green checker-board pat- 


ELEVATION OF GALI.EY AND TOILET ROOM OF THE “GO-SUM 




LlftHT 









































































































































































































YACHT PLUMBING 


247 


tern, with squares about two inches on the side, 
gives a neat and cleanly appearance; and it will 
look fresh after each rub-down, no matter how 
sloppy and niggery the chef may have been when 
in action. Next you need a sink, and the smallest 
that comes is 8 inches by 16 inches in plain cast- 
iron or enameled, the former costing $1.10. 
Neither kind will have the right sort of stopper 
for the waste pipe, for, on land, the sink is not 
meant to get full of water, and only has a rose 
sieve. But, in your cruiser, the sink is the wash- 
pan for dishes, and so order with it a rubber and 
brass fixture. After you are through mopping 
the crockery, pull the chain and there you are. 
The sink connection to the lead waste pipe is by 
our old friend the brass nipple and requires an¬ 
other wiped joint. As it is obvious that dish¬ 
washing operations are not continuous, and also 
that every cubic inch of room is valuable, the sink 
should have a neat oak cover, fitting down flush 
into it, and onto this cover is screwed the stove. 
I have done very fair meals with a two-hole kero¬ 
sene affair; but they are landlubbery contraptions, 
with a patent device to warn one when the lamp 
is full, which device is a lovely spiller of kerosene 
when the swash of some passing steamboat rolls 
you mightily; and I have come to prefer the stand- 


248 


MOTOR BOATING 


ard denatured alcohol yacht stove, with two bur¬ 
ners and a small globular reservoir, to any form 
of kerosene device. Whatever it is, be very sure 
that it is screwed fast, or you will have a curious 
mixture of dinner and blazing combustibles eating 
the heart out of your ship, some fine calm day,— 
when a passing tug gives you her wash abeam. 

The sink being rectangular, and the ship being 
anything but that, you will need about eighteen 
inches of room to mount it in. This leaves you 
eighteen inches remaining out of your three feet of 
galley. The next thing wanted will be an icebox; 
and plans of yachts usually show them built in 
cunningly into the general architectural effect. 
You are lucky if the carpenters do not get away 
with ten dollars ’ worth of time in doing it, and 
then they will take up a lot of room better used 
for something else. And, all the time, the very 
thing you w r ant is waiting for you in any depart¬ 
ment store. It is a little tin baby refrigerator, 
painted to imitate oak closely, 16 inches long by 
12 inches deep and 10 inches high. It is double- 
lined with insulation inside the walls; galvanized 
heavily inside; has an ice compartment which 
just holds a five-cent cake of ice; a sliding shelf 
in the interior; and a nickel-plated faucet con¬ 
nected to the ice-compartment, whereby pure ice- 


YACHT PLUMBING 


249 


water can be drawn off to drink. Take this away 
from that department store, for it is good; and 
they can have your $2.75 and welcome. You will 
find that it will just fill the space left over in the 
galley by butting it against the edge of the sink. 
To mount the two of them in the galley, you put 
in a piece of 6 x %-inch oak, set edgewise, and 
running parallel to the skin of the ship. The 
drawings show just how the sink and ice-box are 
mounted on this. A similar piece of oak, let in 
along the floor below it, suggests completing the 
frame in oak and giving it two little doors, so that 
all the space under the sink and ice-box is enclosed 
and can be provided with shelves. What shall we 
put in there? The novice would at once fill half 
of it with pots and pans; but,—every inch aboard 
ship is valuable! The pots and pans do very 
much better on brass hooks, judiciously planted 
around the stove above the sink; cups are best 
hung in rows from tiny brass hooks screwed into 
the ceiling; and the plates are better nested and 
slipped into light racks behind the cover of the 
ice-box. So that practically all the shelf-room 
below is available for staple groceries, and you’ll 
appreciate this if you stay out half a week in her. 

All this equipment should be put on the same 
side of the boat as the wash-basin in the bathroom, 


250 


MOTOR BOATING 


so that the same plumbing line can supply both. 
Under the galley floor is room for a very respect¬ 
able fresh-water tank; and a reserve one can be 
put in the lower part of the anchor locker, as all 
that space will not be needed for rope. To get 
the water out, one can use a hand force-pump, 
made as in the sketch, with two brass check-valves 
and pipe fittings, or you can mount an ordinary 
bicycle-tire pump at any convenient point in the 
galley, connecting to a small riser from the top 
of the tank. Pumping on this puts air-pressure 
on the tank, and makes the water ascend in the 
pipe leading out of the bottom of the tank and 
branching to the sink and wash-basin faucets. It 
is a very clean, handy system, and cheap to install. 
The drain-pipe branches to both the bottom of the 
sink and the wash-basin in the bathroom, and will 
be installed by the yacht plumber at the same time 
he puts in the toilet,—an you be wise! The joints 
have to be soldered or “wiped’’ as described be¬ 
fore and the whole installation must be impervi¬ 
ous to leaks, which it certainly will not if put in 
by amateur efforts. 

On the opposite side of the galley you have the 
whole space available for something new. You 
don’t need any more cooking equipment, but you 
do need a long locker in which coats can be hung, 



DETAILS OF CABIN CONSTRUCTION ON THE “GO-SUM” 

After completing the planking at the shop she was hauled to the shipyard, wher© 
all the cabin work, fittings, and engine installation was performed. She went 
down the ways from this site. 




A HOME-MADE FORCE PUMP ELECTRICAL CONNECTIONS FOR JUMP-SPARK 

FROM PIPE-FITTINGS IGNITION, 3-CYLINDER ENGINE 




































































YACHT PLUMBING 


251 


guns and fishing rods stored, brooms put away, 
and the set of storm oilskins kept. Here is just 
the place for such a locker, reaching from floor 
to ceiling, say 5 feet 8 inches, 16 inches deep and 
3 feet long. Frame around it with 6 x%-inch oak, 
and put in a door with a long pier-glass mirror. 

Still another layout of yacht plumbing is to 
abolish the bathroom entirely, putting the galley 
and engine furthest forward in a large room about 
five feet long. In such case you screw to the for¬ 
ward panel of your stateroom a folding lavatory 
as shown in the illustration with the pump and 
waste lines coming in from the galley through the 
back of the panel. The pump connection should 
have no branches but go direct to the skin of the 
ship five or six inches below water line. All one’s 
shaving and washing articles go in racks and hold¬ 
ers inside this lavatory, which closes up with a 
mirror on the back precisely as in the stateroom 
lavatories of ocean steamers. In this plan prac¬ 
tically the only disposal that can be made of the 
w.c. is under an oak seat in the extreme forward 
end of the galley. It is, moreover, a rather ex¬ 
pensive arrangement as these lavatories run from 
$35 up, against $7 for a white enameled covered 
basin complete with nickel faucet. 

As to the cost of the yacht toilet, a well-made 




252 


MOTOR BOATING 


plain one can be had with oak seat for $30, in¬ 
stalled complete by any yacht plumber. He gets 
enough rake-off on buying it to pay for putting 
it in at the same price it will cost you to buy it. 


CHAPTER V 


ALL ABOUT YOUR ENGINE 

There is no shadow of doubt but that Maud 
is of all creation the animal most complicated. 
Blown hither and yonder by the gusty winds of 
her temperament, Maud is willful and wayward— 
and complex. Excepting the hen, most creatures 
move about with some fixed purpose, a few settled 
convictions, in life that cause them to arrive some¬ 
where from some definite starting point. But 
Maud has obstinacy to a degree, and also a poor 
memory as to starting points, so she is apt to act 
upon a set of convictions belonging to entirely the 
wrong starting points and thus arrive far off the 
reservation. It is merely a case of over-complex¬ 
ity. Any animal that tries to take along a whole 
load of last week’s impressions and mix them in 
on to-day’s doings is sure to become complicated 
and hard to understand. Wherefore Maud is more 
than apt to arrive on a thistle top instead of over 
the finish line if she attempts anything so direct 
and single minded as a “mewl” race. 

Most animals have their counterparts in the 
253 


254 


MOTOR BOATING 


world of machinery, and I have had more than 
once to point out the beautiful parallel that exists 
between Maud and the gasoline engine of the mo¬ 
tor boat. The basic reason for the resemblance is 
the same—complexity. For the gas engine is com¬ 
plex, the four-cycle only a little more so than the 
two. As turned over to you by the manufacturer 
a whole lot of things have been made to jibe in 
order that the engine shall run smoothly. Failure 
of any one of these to act at the right time will 
bring Maud’s heels up into the air and leave you 
blissfully unaware which particular flea is troub¬ 
ling her. Wherefore, as Maud is afflicted with a 
tempestuous disposition, has a population of 172 
censused fleas and, further, possesses a quantity 
of gouty joints, it behooves you to know her not 
only well but thoroughly. If flea No. 123 is troub¬ 
ling her, for heaven’s sake don’t strike in the dark 
and stir up Nos. 100 to 150 inclusive, but flag that 
disorderly No. 123 and no other. Don’t try to 
carry a “trouble chart” around in your brain or 
in your pocket. The best thing to do with a 
trouble chart is to spend an afternoon with one in 
company with your engine. You will know so 
much about Maud and why she works at all be¬ 
fore you get through that you could write an au- 


ALL ABOUT YOUR ENGINE 255 


thoritative volume entitled “A Wild Animal I 
Have Met, ’’ with fluency and feeling. 

Let us go over the various sources from which 
Maud draws her sinews of war and see if we can’t 
construct an automatic trouble chart based on 
knowing just why Maud is good enough to run— 
when she does run. I assume at the outset that 
you know how a gas engine works, both the two- 
cycle and four-cycle species. If you don’t it will 
not have been the fault of the engine catalogues, 
for, after reading a few of them you can say the 
dope over in your sleep or sing it backward. I 
always like to begin with the carburetor. It’s full 
of gasoline and trouble, ofttimes also replete with 
sea-water, lubricating oil, galvanized iron chips, 
mud, and other species of grit in Maud’s hay. 
Now to be really fool-proof and valuable the car¬ 
buretor must be automatic in its action. In large 
power house gas-engines its place is taken by a 
mixing valve, adjustable by hand for changes of 
speed and load and pressure of gas. But in a boat 
you are frequently changing the speed of your 
engine and the pressure of gasoline is constantly 
changing as the tank empties. If you had to run 
around and adjust the spray needle or alter the 
air intake every time you changed the speed of 
your engine, the carburetor would be an intoler- 





256 


MOTOR BOATING 


able nuisance. So it must be made automatic. 
To keep the spray always the same no matter how 
much gasoline there is in the tank, there is a little 
reservoir in the carburetor feeding the spray 
direct, and the main tank fills the reservoir 
through a float feed-valve. This automatically 
shuts when the level in the reservoir reaches the 
right height to give a proper spray. And right 
here some one opens the bag and a whole colony 
of fleas camp out on Maud’s body politic. Sup¬ 
pose there is grit in your gasoline or a little free 
acid which eats off some of the lining of the tank. 
Forthwith enters a large section of the trouble- 
chart, because a tiny piece of this grit gets under 
the needle of the automatic float feed-valve so that 
it cannot close, thus allowing the reservoir to fill 
up and bringing the full pressure of the tank upon 
the spray valve. You can appreciate how that 
spray will turn into a geyser forthwith, but the 
first indication you have that another flea is at 
large is a mysterious stoppage of the engine. The 
trouble is that you are 11 flooded , 9 ’ but like as not 
you will begin monkeying with the ignition after 
a few futile crankings of the flywheel. However, 
your nose soon apprises you that gasoline is 
abroad in the air; and you investigate to discover 
it dripping steadily from the air intake of the car- 


/ 


SOME WELL-KNOWN CARBURETORS Kingston, Schebler. Ferro, etc 






















































ALL ABOUT YOUR ENGINE 2 57 

buretor. A few energetic workings back and forth 
of the float feed-valve spindle which sticks up out 
of the carburetor will usually dislodge the piece 
of grit and the dribbling of gasoline will cease. 

Now to get rid of the flooding. When the mix¬ 
ture of air and gasoline gets either too rich or too 
poor, it will first fire slowly with loss of power, 
and finally cease to explode altogether. If too 
poor, you will know it by backfiring through the 
carburetor, of which more later, but if too rich she 
will slow down and stop, while the exhaust will be 
black and smoky. Close the spray needle and 
crank her over a dozen times until she starts to 
run again. Let her run until Maud lets out with 
both heels through the carburetor which is a sign 
that her fodder is running low; open up the spray 
needle gradually about one-fourth turn, and ob¬ 
serve events. If she goes right along and is up 
to full speed everything is 0. K. If not, give her 
just a mite more gas. Understand that a small 
drip of gasoline when the engine is standing still, 
particularly when cold, is entirely normal. It 
simply means that your spray, not having any air 
to gasefy, is dripping out through the air intake 
instead of going into the engine. It should dis¬ 
appear soon after starting up; if not, either your 
spray needle is too far open or there is grit under 


258 


MOTOR BOATING 


the float valve needle and the pressure of the tank 
is coming on the spray instead of only the pres¬ 
sure of the carburetor reservoir. 

Backfiring through the carburetor in a two-cycle 
engine is always due to just one cause, too slow 
ignition of the charge. Remember that there is 
always a charge in the crank case ready to pop 
into the cylinder the instant the inlet port opens. 
Now if the mixture in the cylinder is too lean, it 
will fire very slowly. It will still be burning at the 
end of the stroke as the inlet port opens, when in 
rushes the crank case mixture, instantly takes 
fire, and whang! out goes the whole business 
through the carburetor intake which is open to 
the air. It can also ignite too slowly because of 
poor spark or late timing, but these are other 
fleas which we will come to later. 

The second feature in which the carburetor 
must be automatic is in the amount of air which 
it admits to the cylinder as the speed varies. You 
will admit that there is a minimum amount of air 
needed, corresponding to slow speed. Suppose we 
make the fixed inlet opening of the carburetor the 
right size to admit this amount of air. Then when 
she gains speed she will begin to pump and suck 
for more air, and the way to get it automatically 
is to have a second intake, closed by a disc-valve 


ALL ABOUT YOUR ENGINE 259 


with a light spring. The more the engine speeds 
the more this valve opens. Its tension is adjusted 
by a fine screw with locknut, and this you are to 
leave alone no matter what else you monkey with. 
How do you know how much air is proper for the 
mixtures at different speeds? The tension of 
that spring was adjusted at the factory, where 
they know just how much air it will allow. Know¬ 
ing the air to be right, all you have to do is to 
adjust the gasoline spray; but if you get both of 
them out of kilter you are lost in a sea of unknown 
quantities. 

In general, all makes of carburetors aim to au¬ 
tomatically proportion the quantity of air and gas 
mixture to suit the speed of the motor. Nearly 
all use the float feed to control the spray, the ex¬ 
cellence of the mechanism depending on the size 
of the float, its leverage and the workmanship put 
on the needle valve. Nearly all use a spring-con- 
trolled auxiliary air intake valve in addition to the 
constant air opening. One famous carburetor uses 
a set of five bronze ball valves to replace the 
spring auxiliary. As the motor speeds up the five 
balls, one after the other, float above their seats, 
held up by the inrush of air sucked in by the en¬ 
gine. The weight of the balls is always the same, 
so that the apparatus cannot be put out of ad- 



260 


MOTOR BOATING 


justment by some fool who likes to tamper with 
the tension spring of his carburetor. Nor does 
the pressure due to the weight of the balls ever 
change, whereas a spring is apt to get fatigued or 
break. 

Finally, nearly all carburetors have some sort 
of an arrangement to thoroughly mix the incoming 
air with the gasoline spray. It is usually done 
with some sort of nozzle on the injector principle. 

The carburetor is not only the source of Maud’s 
hay supply, but a good place to introduce lubrica¬ 
tion for her interior joints. The piston, cylinder 
walls and connecting rod pin have three ways to 
get lubrication: (1) by splash from the case (not 
to be depended upon). (2) Through a port in the 
side of the cylinder always covered by the piston. 
This is usually excellent for the connecting-rod 
pin, as it gets a drop as it passes the oil duct. 
(3) General lubrication of the cylinder through 
the carburetor. This is the main reliance, for the 
oil is drawn in with the mixture as a sort of par¬ 
tially dissolved spray. To this end about sixteen 
drops a minute, one every four seconds, should be 
fed to the carburetor for a ten to fifteen-horse 
sized engine. If too much the surplus will burn 
and you get a white smoky exhaust. 

The carburetor feeds direct to the crank case in 


ALL ABOUT YOUR ENGINE 261 


two-cycle engines and to the inlet valve manifold 
in four cycles. For four-cylinder and six-cylinder 
engines it is better to have two smaller carbure¬ 
tors, each feeding a group of two or three cylin¬ 
ders than one large one, because the end cylinders 
rarely get their share of the mixture if one long 
manifold is fed by a single carburetor. There 
should always be two stop valves between the tank 
and the carburetor. Gasoline is like steam—when 
you want it shut off you want it so a whole lot. 
Wherefore if your single valve leaks, gasoline will 
drip into the boat all the time you have the car¬ 
buretor off for repairs. You cannot even fix the 
float valve. The reason for preferring a second 
stop valve, right at the tank, is that it then com¬ 
mands the whole line of gasoline piping in case 
you need to take it apart. All joints for all gaso¬ 
line piping are best made up with ordinary brown 
kitchen soap rubbed on the threads. They will be 
far tighter than any form of lead paint used in 
steam fitting. 

This Maud person is a highly nervous critter. 
She has electric nerve centers which cause her to 
kick at the right psychological moment—and, 
more than often, at the wrong. You might as 
well know your ignition from the ground up as 
it is Maud’s nervous system and is one of the 


262 


MOTOR BOATING 


things that keeps her from relapsing into chronic 
coma. It takes a certain appreciable moment of 
time for a charge to ignite and develop explosive 
pressure. This is the reason why you can touch 
her off before the compression stroke is com¬ 
pleted, as the engine utilizes the short time in 
going over the center and starting down again in 
igniting the charge and getting up pressure in it. 
The ideal point of timing, then, is when the pres¬ 
sure catches the piston just after it starts down¬ 
wards. Any point earlier than this will lose speed 
and power for you, besides causing a slight thump 
or knock in the connecting rod pin which can be 
heard and felt as you advance the spark. Every 
point later than the ideal causes a falling off of 
speed until finally the charge ignites so late as to 
be still burning when the stroke is ended, and, in 
a two-cycle engine, the crank case charge will 
ignite and fire back through the carburetor. The 
ignition system harbors the largest colony of fleas 
in Maud’s make up. All the high-tension appa¬ 
ratus is more or less liable to be bitten as it is 
very susceptible to shorts and breakdowns from 
moisture. Formerly the jump spark plugs in a 
small open boat were a prolonged terror in a 
choppy sea, but now, with the top of the plug 
properly enclosed, this trouble has been chased. 


CRANK PISTON AND ENGINE BED 


















• .f- 







' -r" 








































































































ALL ABOUT YOUR ENGINE 263 


There is still, however, the likelihood of the plugs 
becoming cracked when very hot explosions are 
being used and the engine running at maximum 
power with spark advanced a trifle too much. 
Porcelain plugs are prone to this evil, and the 
minute they crack, oil soaks into the cracks and 
“grounds” the plug on the case. Maud at once 
becomes vicious and balky for, when the timer 
comes around to that plug, instead of a spark 
passing, the current simply travels through the 
oily crack to the engine body, side-tracking the 
spark-gap entirely. The charge is therefore not 
ignited, and, if the other cylinder is still going, 
its hot exhaust is quite likely to touch off the 
unexploded charge of the first cylinder as soon 
as it gets into the muffler. 

Another promiscuous flea which causes Maud 
to rear up at the wrong time or not at all, is 
found in the vibrators of the spark coil. The 
fatness of the spark crossing the air gap of the 
plug inside of the cylinder is due to two things: 
(1) the strength of the battery current, (2) the 
amplitude of vibration of the vibrators. All the 
best makes of coil have platinum tips on both 
needle and spring of the vibrators, and some of 
them use silver, which is not as good. In either 
case in due course of time the surface of both 


264 


MOTOR BOATING 


spring and point becomes oxidized so that the 
current cannot pass and the vibrator will not 
work. Remember that inside of your spark coil 
is the primary circuit with its bundle of iron 
wires as a core. This primary circuit is under no 
heavier voltage than that given by the batteries 
of the magneto, somewhere around six to nine 
volts. Very little oxidization of the platinum will 
make the resistance at this point of the primary 
circuit so great that the current cannot start and 
will miss. Each time it misses a corresponding 
miss takes place in the secondary circuit as no 
spark was induced, so that your charge passes 
out unexploded into the exhaust. Generally it 
gets away into the air without further trouble, 
but if there happens to be a shining spark of hot 
carbon dust in the muffler or a spark of carbon is 
shot out with the next exhaust into the muffler, it 
will touch off this and explode the charge and 
you will have a rumpus in the muffler. 

On the other hand, if the screw of the vibrator 
is turned back so far that the spring must travel 
relatively quite a large distance to make a con¬ 
nection, you will get very much slower vibrations 
and the resulting spark will be thin and of very 
high tension so that it is quite likely to break 
down the insulation of the spark plug somewhere, 


ALL ABOUT YOUR ENGINE 265 


and “ short’’ the circuit into the engine ground. 
The ideal to be looked for is a short fat spark in 
the plug, which can be gotten by a medium ampli¬ 
tude of vibration. 


CHAPTER VI 


ENGINE TROUBLES 

The title of this chapter ought to be ‘ 4 The Care 
and Feeding of the Mule, ’ 9 as, if you have a really 
good one—one with a pedigree—it should not re¬ 
quire much overhauling before going into commis¬ 
sion again. That is, if you have treated it right 
and fed it the proper amounts of oil and gasoline 
during the previous season. In other words, a 
little advice on taking care of the mule, if reli¬ 
giously followed, should make any subsequent re¬ 
marks on overhauling for the next season super¬ 
fluous. While a steam engine may be likened to a 
horse and be measured in horsepower, the gaso¬ 
line engine, particularly the breeds sold for mo¬ 
torboats, may be more appropriately symbolized 
by the mule, and ad seq. measured in mule power, 
I presume. A well-bred one, of Christian ante¬ 
cedents, will turn faithfully away at the propeller, 
hour after hour, with no more trouble than there 
is between a kitten and a warm brick; when, 
presto!—her name is Maud, and you can start in 

on a two-hour guessing-match while she will give 
266 


ENGINE TROUBLES 


267 


an exhibition of mulish obstinacy in the matter of 
responding to urgent crankings that will leave her 
animal counterpart shamed into the booby-hatch. 
The reason is simple enough. Not that the mule is 
by nature any more complicated in its working 
parts than the steam engine, but because so many 
different things enter into the successful running 
of a gasoline engine. In the steam engine the 
same cylinder and piston and connecting rod con¬ 
stitute the mechanical features which turn the 
crank, but all it has to do is to let in steam first 
at one end and then at the other. But, a gas en¬ 
gine has first to mix air and gasoline vapor to 
form an explosive gas of the right proportions; 
then it has to fill the cylinder with this gas, com¬ 
press it, touch it off at the right moment and 
finally sweep the burnt gases out; and in a two- 
cycle engine it has to both do this latter and fill 
the cylinder with fresh mixture at the same time. 
When we think how many things go into just mak¬ 
ing that spark to touch off the mule at the right 
moment, it is no wonder that when she balks there 
are any one of two hundred different possible 
causes for the walkout. 

My advice to all and sundry is to leave Maud 
alone, unless she is knocking or squeaking or rais¬ 
ing some other Cain that ordinary oiling or over- 



268 


MOTOR BOATING 


hauling the ignition cannot remedy. You wouldn’t 
take her animal equivalent apart and expect to 
get her blithely together again; nor can a mere 
mortal do the same thing with the gasoline vari¬ 
ety. It takes a machinist. Consider how the beast 
is made. You have a crank case, split mathe¬ 
matically in half at the bearings, and a combined 
engine-frame and cylinder which bolts down onto 
this lower half. Between is a gasket which you de¬ 
stroy if you take it apart. The gasket is gastight, 
so as to hold the compression, yet not so tight as 
to press down on the bearings and seize the shaft. 
Nor is it so loose as to allow any pound in the 
main bearings. The thickness of a sheet of paper 
is more than the difference between these two, 
and yet you are supposed to get on a new gasket 
of exactly the right thickness (eked out with the 
proper number of liners) to get your bearing-caps 
exactly right upon tightening the casenuts hard 
down, and yet leave no possible leak for air to get 
in and spoil your compression and vitiate your 
mixture. A good, patient machinist, used to this 
kind of work, will usually hit it off the first time— 
but not you. You will cut and try and make mis¬ 
takes until you are black in the face—but woe to 
you if you start the mule up again until every¬ 
thing is exactly right; not nearly right, but ex- 


ENGINE TROUBLES 


269 


actly so to the thousandth of an inch. I am 
merely giving out this warning to discourage the 
cheerful optimist who lays hands on the crank 
case and gets everything apart whenever a wire 
gets loose somewhere in his ignition outfit. Such 
an enthusiast is usually in hot water with his en¬ 
gine most of the time. It is on record that one 
of these cheerful idiots took his engine apart on 
a case of ignition switch plug jarring loose. He 
labored over the piston and interior works for 
two hours, got her together again, cranked for ten 
minutes without drawing a single snort—and then 
some one handed him a spiral spring eighteen 
inches long which had been just picked up out of 
the bilge. As it wasn’t in the boat before they 
took the engine apart, it must have sneaked out 
of her somewhere , but, as it beat them all where 
that spring could possibly belong, they hailed a 
tug and bought a tow home. 

Usually if the mule kicks there is something 
wrong with the ignition, or the mixture, or the 
jacket water, or the gasoline supply. For instance, 
she will suddenly, without warning, back-fire 
through the carburetor, filling the boat with 
smoke. Now what caused that? The engineer 
looks wise and grins. Pretty soon she does the 
same trick again—and the engineer looks sheep- 


270 


MOTOR BOATING 


ish. He knows that it is due to any one of five 
causes, but which one he is not prepared to say, 
offhand. Now, the action itself is simply ignition 
of the fresh, incoming charge by left-over burning 
gas in the cylinder. If the mixture was too weak 
it will burn slowly and some of it will still be afire 
when the engine reaches the end of its stroke and 
uncovers the inlet port to take in the fresh charge. 
If the * 1 scrutineer’ 9 is a wise lobster he first takes 
a feel of the tank valves to be sure that neither 
of them has been left shut in the excitement of 
starting off. Next, he tries the carburetor to see 
that it is feeding properly, and if so, opens its 
spray needle a trifle to strengthen the mixture. If 
everything quiets down forthwith he thanks his 
stars and throws out his chest, but if again one of 
those disconcerting back-fires butts in to shame- 
face him he tries the timer, as the spark may he 
too late, so that it does not start the mixture burn¬ 
ing soon enough to get it all burnt up before the 
end of the stroke. If the engine is four-cycle, his 
trouble may be in the inlet valve being leaky, in 
which case, if it does not soon quiet down and the 
valve seat properly, he gives the carburetor in¬ 
take a little extra oil and hopes for results. If 
not— good-night —down with the hook and grind 
in that valve! 


ENGINE TROUBLES 


271 


Another joy of the motorboatist is to hear the 
regular drumming of his exhaust interrupted with 
a sickening miss now and then, accompanied with 
an occasional backfire of the engine. This is an 
ignition trouble. Batteries too weak; switch over 
onto the other set and if it stops— “there's our 
man,” to quote Sherlocko. If she continues to 
drop a stitch now and then, you for the vibrators. 
Shut off the gasoline, run the carburetor out, and 
when the mule comes to a stop turn the flywheel 
over some, listening intently to the song of your 
vibrators. If both are about the same as usual, 
try taking out the spark plugs and see if they are 
sooted or not. Everything O.K. with them? Well, 
then, run over all the electric connections; there 
is probably a loose wire in either the primary or 
secondary circuit. Try the switch and see that 
both it and its plug are in good firm contact. An 
engine with weak batteries will both miss and 
backfire, varying these antics with an occasional 
complete stoppage, starting off backwards and 
wrenching your wrists out of joint as soon as you 
get a firm grip on the flywheel and start to turn 
it. If it is two-cylinder, and one of them is firing 
all right, while the other is missing, it will make 
half a dozen revolutions and then come to a stop, 
usually with a back-fire thrown in, just to show 


272 


MOTOR BOATING 


that there is no hard feeling at all. The very next 
ignition will start her off violently backwards, 
and, as you are usually on the other end of the 
flywheel rim about that time, she is liable to hurt 
your feelings. Cracked spark plugs are a prolific 
source of this evil. Some galoot, who never navi¬ 
gated anything bigger than an Iowa duck pond 
in his life, will open the throttle to the limit and 
give her all the gasoline through the carburetor 
spray that she will stand, “just to see her go.” 
She does. Into a trance. The mule has balked 
for keeps. She throws about unceremoniously 
any one who dares lay hands on her flywheel. If 
it is dark you can easily locate the trouble, as 
you will note sparks coming down outside the 
plugs and entering the top of the cylinder head. 
By day you will easily perceive that the plug is 
getting oily and has fine dark lines in it. Take 
out the porcelain center-pieces and throw them 
overboard, as they are worthless and ruined. 
New ones will cost you 50 cents per each, and, on 
putting them in, Maud will become tractable once 
more. 

Pounding is another disease to which your mule 
is liable, particularly from the timer or propeller 
shaft, as it is contagious. If the shaft is not in 
line, and never was, you will hear from it sooner 


ENGINE TROUBLES 


273 


or later, and if you have habitually kept the spark 
too advanced it will develop into a pound. You 
touched her off too soon, and before the piston 
has gotten to the top of its stroke the full force 
of the explosion had already developed, and so 
the flywheel had to drive it over, thus introducing 
heavy strains on the bearings at the top of the 
stroke. Listen carefully at your engine as you 
advance the spark. She will gain in speed and 
improve up to a certain point, when she begins 
to develop a faint thump and on still advancing 
she will begin to slow down. This shows you 
where you are at, and you can easily judge about 
how far back of this point to set the spark and 
still get good speed with the engine running 
easily. 

Every good skipper keeps his eye peeled over 
the side to know all the time how his water and 
exhaust are getting on. The ideal exhaust has but 
a faint wisp of bluish white smoke trailing astern. 
If it is yellow and smoky you are too generous 
with your oil, and if you do not take a reef in the 
oil feed to the carburetor you will soon soot up the 
interior of the engine. If the smoke is blackish 
you have the needle-valve of the spray nozzle of 
the carburetor too far open, and are getting 
flooded. Close it and shut off the tank valve until 


274 


MOTOR BOATING 


the engine begins to backfire, by which time she 
ought to be ready for gasoline again and every¬ 
thing in good shape. If the exhaust shows clouds 
of white smoke which do not disappear no matter 
what you do with the carburetor needle, you have 
more or less water in the gasoline, which got into 
the tank somehow (probably in the last can you 
bought). It all collects in the bottom of the tank 
and gets into the feed-pipe at once if same is 
properly located. It will soon disappear, however, 
and you can usually look for it after a long storm, 
as the damp air and condensed moisture combined 
make a lot of steam in the exhaust. 

The mule should be felt all over about once 
every fifteen minutes when under way. Even 
when entirely alone in a large cruiser it is no 
trick at all to dash below, leaving her to her own 
helm for a minute, and run your hand over all the 
main bearings, cylinder walls, etc. Below the 
jacket the cylinder walls should not be hotter than 
your hand can bear. If so, give her a drop or so 
more oil per minute until it cools down again. 
The main bearings for a ten-horse engine get 
about four drops a minute of good gas-engine oil; 
the cylinders ten drops each, and the carburetor 
fourteen. Any mule will labor away faithfully 
and indefinitely if all its journals and its cylinder 


ENGINE TROUBLES 


275 


walls get enough and not too much oil fed to it 
regularly. Eternal vigilance is the price of peace. 
If you have been mindful of Maud and her in¬ 
firmities during your season’s cruises, and have 
caught and headed off every attempt to heat up, 
there should be no necessity to open up the case 
and break the gasket joints for an overhauling 
before going into commission again next season. 

But usually the reverse has been the case. You 
have had carouses wherein the mule was left to its 
own devices, and your first intimation that it was 
still alive was a pungent odor of frying oil, a 
slowing down of the mill, or a loud shriek from 
some forgotten shaft-bearing. You stopped and 
ran her slowly, while fresh oil cleared the bearing 
and got her cooled down again,—but Maud was 
never the same animal again. Or, worse, you may 
have been bowling merrily across the pickle, when 
suddenly there was a tremendous hubbub inside 
the case and you find that the babbit has left the 
connecting rod bearing for parts unknown and 
you are running on bronze and steel alone,—a hot 
combination. Off comes the cylinder case and you 
extemporize a brass liner or put in a spare babbitt 
bearing,—or get towed home. In any event the 
mule is not feeling very well thereafter, and so, 
by the end of the season, she has a number of 


276 


MOTOR BOATING 


ailments which require overhauling—to say noth¬ 
ing of the entire ignition system. The proper way 
to pour a new babbitt bearing is to get it done in 
a machine shop for you, and pay the machinist 
for his time; but if you elect to do it yourself do 
not pour it in place on the crank shaft, but dis¬ 
connect the connecting rod and pour it around a 
steel billet the same size as the crank-shaft pin, 
and then scrape it to a true bearing all over, test¬ 
ing it with red lead and scraping down the high 
spots until it really has a true bearing and does not 
merely touch on the high spots alone. Now that 
you have her apart, look at all the piston rings 
carefully and see that none of them are gummed 
fast or cracked. Get new ones made or sent from 
the manufacturers if there are any broken ones 
discovered. They should all float loose and free in 
their grooves. Clean out all soot deposits from 
the piston top and combustion chamber while you 
are at it, and take a look at the water ports to see 
that they have no deposits of mud or pebbles or 
eel-grass in any of the ports or pockets. In mak¬ 
ing up journals they should be free to move easily, 
but without the slightest play. If you can wiggle 
it the least bit, rest assured that that bearing will 
knock when the power is on. The safest way is to 
take out liners until she just seizes and then put 


ENGINE TROUBLES 


277 


under a single thin paper one, just freeing the 
journal enough to permit a film of oil. Note care¬ 
fully the material of the gasket and get the same, 
of the same thickness, no matter what it costs. It 
is not every gasket material which is oil-proof, 
air-proof and heat-proof combined. If you take 
any old gasket material you find in the hardware 
store, there is going to be a squall ahead coming 
to you. Cut the gasket to size by laying it on th© 
crank case and peining it with the hammer along 
the edges and bolt holes. You are now ready to 
assemble the engine. Ten to one, when you have 
screwed down the capscrew nuts, she will seize or 
else you will detect a slight hiss when you crank 
her over. Besides which, the main journals will 
all grip fast as soon as you screw down their bolts. 
Don’t compromise matters by leaving the nuts 
slacked back, as this simply invites a knock. It is 
now time to show what you can do in the exercise 
of patience and finesse in the handling of paper 
liners. Any good heavy paper will do, as it at 
once soaks with oil and becomes air-proof. Work 
at your liners until everything is free—and just 
free. By that I don’t mean that it runs hard, as 
a few such handicaps will rob your engine of half 
its power, besides running hot in time, but I do 
mean that the journal should be free enough to 


278 


MOTOR BOATING 


spin around without having play enough to let a 
knock get started. Since you are overhauling for 
the entire season, don ’t be satisfied with anything 
but the real goods, and, if you detect a suspicion 
of a pound with the power on, get after it and take 
out a hair ’s breadth of liner until the engine runs 
like a lamb. The chances are she will continue 
to do so throughout the season if you do your 
share as regards oiling her and watching for hot 
spots. 

Having gotten the engine to rights, the ignition 
system is the next peck of trouble to go after. 
Throughout the season previous it was the most 
prolific source of trouble in connection with the 
mule and if you test it now you will probably find 
it still doing business at the old stand. I always 
prefer to make the ignition system as compact 
and moisture-proof as possible. If the cruiser is 
a large one with cabin I prefer a table over the 
engine with the spark coils and batteries mounted 
under the table. This gives the least possible 
wiring, as only a single piece of duplex rubber- 
covered wire will have to be led out to the control 
switch on the cabin panel in the cockpit. It is also 
about the most moisture-proof spot to be found 
in the boat, besides which the heat from the en¬ 
gine gives everything a periodical drying out. If 



COMPBESSION 


3 y 2 H. P. FEBBO 2-CYCLE ENGINE 





















































































0 
























ENGINE TROUBLES 


279 


such a scheme cannot be worked in connection 
with the engine, the best thing to do is to make a 
battery box of the right size to hold six dry-cells; 
wire them up and then pour melted paraffin over 
and around them until the box is filled to the brim. 
Put two screw terminals on the cover of the box, 
and lead the plus and minus wires to them inside. 
Now screw down the cover and paint the whole 
box over outside with black tar paint. Such a 
battery will hold up about twice as long as if the 
cells are laid loose in some shelf under a berth or 
seat. The batteries should give at least twenty 
amperes each when new, and when the amperage 
falls as low as twelve open the box and set in six 
new cells. 

Probably the most abundant cause of obstinate 
periods on the part of Maud is the wiring system, 
particularly the low-tension side. This is gener¬ 
ally due to the quality of the wires. People think 
that almost any old bell wiring will do for the 
low-tension side, forgetting that the engine is 
“ ground’’ and that any leak in the wire anywhere 
to “ground” completes the circuit and allows the 
batteries to bleed themselves to death, giving a 
slow but feeble current night and day, month after 
month, until you suddenly realize that they are 
run down without having been on more than a 


280 


MOTOR BOATING 


few cruises with the boat. The best wire to use is 
duplex white-core rubber-covered double-braid 
No. 14 wire, such as is standard for conduit work 
throughout the big city buildings. This wire is 
not at all atfected by the prevalent dampness al¬ 
ways present about a boat at night, nor will it ever 
‘ ‘ ground.’ ’ As the two wires are in one flat strip 
side by side, it makes a neat, compact lead. To 
branch it you can cut the double-braid covering 
back as far as you like, thus separating the two 
rubber-covered leads which can be led off wher¬ 
ever you want. In wiring I split the duplex at the 
two negatives of both sets of batteries to the 
switch in the cockpit, thus leading the negatives 
of both sets of batteries to the switch. I then come 
back to the handle of the timer with a single 
ground line of ordinary weatherproof. If the en¬ 
gine is two-cylinder I come over to the spark coils 
from the two sides of the timer with another lead 
of duplex, and wind up with a single rubber-cov¬ 
ered positive from the spark coils to the batteries. 
The best way to tack up the duplex is by “milo- 
nite” telephone nails, which are insulated with a 
bushing and two washers. 

In overhauling the engine, the oil system should 
receive a thorough cleaning throughout, especially 
if you are using grease cups. Keep a squirt-can 


ENGINE TROUBLES 


281 


of gasoline handy and sluice out all ducts that may 
be drilled through the crank shaft arms to lead 
oil from the main bearings to the crank pin. 
Clean out all ducts fed by grease in compression 
cups and sluice out the drips of all sight-feed oil 
cups. If you have an oil manifold, clean out all 
the drips and small brass leads from it. If these 
things are palpably clean and have given no 
trouble before, leave them alone, but if you have 
had to re-use your oil or have had to put in dirty 
oil into the reservoir, most of this dirt will be 
found in the leads and ducts. 

The best way to avoid having extensive over¬ 
hauling troubles each season is to know your mule 
thoroughly enough to keep a sort of automatic 
“trouble chart ’’ in your head. You get to know 
most of her tricks as the seasons go by, but just 
when you think you have her she will spring a new 
one and fool you again. Then is the time you can 
think clearly if you have the whole “innard” 
workings of the mule clear in your mind’s eye. 
The three illustrations opposite page 282 will ex¬ 
plain the whole action of a two-cycle engine. Fig. 
1 shows her sucking in the mixture from the carbu¬ 
retor. If the engine is two-cylinder, here is the first 
chance for trouble, for the other cylinder will be 
in the position of Fig. 2, where the inlet port is 


282 


MOTOR BOATING 


uncovered, allowing the charge to blow into the 
cylinder. If the burnt gases are not all through 
combustion (late spark, weak mixture, etc.), the 
incoming charge will take fire and everything in 
the crank case will blow back through the carbu¬ 
retor filling the boat with smoke. However, if 
nothing like that occurs, the piston of No. 1 will 
descend until it uncovers the exhaust port, thus 
allowing its burnt gases to escape and almost at 
the same time it uncovers the inlet port, allowing 
the charge in the case which was compressed by 
the piston coming down, to blow into the cylinder. 
It strikes the baffle-plate on the piston top which 
deflects it up into the combustion chamber and 
prevents it blowing straight across and out 
through the exhaust port. The piston then as¬ 
cends, instantly shutting off the inlet port and 
compressing the mixture in the combustion cham¬ 
ber. Somewhere up near the top of the stroke it 
is touched off by a spark from the plug, and here 
is where judgment must be exercised. It takes a 
teeny instant of time for that mixture to burn and 
develop the complete force of the explosion, and 
you must set your timer so that this occurs just 
as the piston has reached the top of the stroke 
and has started to descend. Your ear will tell 
you this. If too soon she will pound a little and 


ENGINE TROUBLES 


283 


slow down; if too late she loses speed with the 
throttle of the carburetor remaining the same. 

This is all there is to the action of the mule; 
wherefore if she balks the trouble will be in the 
ignition, carburetor, lubrication, compression or 
water in the order named. Feel her all over. If 
nothing is hot you presumably have no mechanical 
troubles. Turn the flywheel; that will tell you 
about the compression; a glance over the side will 
put you wise as to the water-works; and a look-see 
will tell you by the buzz of vibrators or absence 
of it if the spark-coil is on the job. This much 
can be ascertained in twenty seconds. If there is 
still a nigger somewhere in the wood pile, begin 
with the ignition. The investigation will usually 
end there, or in the carburetor. If you get a loud 
squeal and the engine slows down you don’t have 
to go any farther than the propeller shaft, as only 
brass seized in a journal will let out such a yell. 
Steel is more quiet, but deadly. If the trouble is 
in the gasoline supply and you have to take apart 
any of the tank line connections, remember that 
ordinary brown kitchen soap is the best smear to 
put on the threads before screwing up again. 

One can go on all day gassing about engine 
troubles. Your cause for stoppage may be due 
to any one of 172 different possible troubles, 


284 


MOTOR BOATING 


ninety per cent, of which are trivial but effective, 
and must be ferreted out before further progress 
is to be made. A mule with a good pedigree and 
well installed, however, will give you but mighty 
few real balks in a season, as she is bound to go 
if everything is right and kept so. 

A word as to propellers. Many owners are dis¬ 
satisfied with the speed of their boats and blame 
it on the propeller after due cogitation. If it is 
the screw the manufacturer recommended for that 
particular engine and boat you had better hunt 
elsewhere for your lack of speed; but if you se¬ 
lected the propeller yourself, quite likely the 
trouble is right there. The horsepower of 
your mule is dependent entirely upon how fast 
she can turn up. The explosion cannot be 
made any stronger than the volume of your cylin¬ 
der with a fat spark and good mixture. Beyond 
that you cannot go. To get more “power” out 
of her by putting on a propeller too big for the 
engine to turn at the maximum speed she has, is 
simply to take that much off your available horse¬ 
power. If the engine is, say ten horse, and goes 
about 800 revolutions, a small 18-inch three-bladed 
wheel will develop the maximum power of the 
mill. But if your engine is a large single-cylinder 
slow-speed at five hundred revolutions, you will 


ENGINE TROUBLES 


285 


develop its power better with a large propeller of 
22 inches diameter. In general I prefer the high¬ 
speed three-blade screw with compact multi-cylin¬ 
der engine, and have had excellent success with 
them installed even in raised-deck cabin cruisers. 



CHAPTER VII 


THE GALLEY OF THE POWER CRUISER 

It is surprising how little room you really need 
for the culinary department aboard ship. The 
smallest specimens I have seen consisted of a zinc- 
lined box opening top and front and containing a 
two-burner kerosene oil stove. This had assorted 
pots, pans and spiders hung around its interior 
and was kept under the deck for’ard. Upon it the 
skipper would perform mysterious ceremonies and 
diabolical incantations and bring forth therefrom 
the most remarkable meals you ever threw your lip 
over. In most large power cruisers the galley 
forms part of the engine-room and the crew’s 
quarters, which is well enough in its way, but not 
in my way, as I prefer to be my own crew and 
have, therefore, no use for a boat much over 35 
feet. In such a boat every cubic inch of room is 
precious, as you simply must have a stateroom, a 
living-room and a bathroom, besides a reasonable 
sky-parlor out in the cockpit, so the galley propo¬ 
sition boils down to three feet of the length of the 

boat, which is ample. In point of fact you only 
286 


THE GALLEY 


287 


need one side of the boat at that, and can devote 
the other to a much-needed clothes-locker of suffi¬ 
cient height to accommodate fishing rods, scap 
nets, guns and other such long duffle. As this gal¬ 
ley section is preferably well up for’d, the boat 
will fine away so fast that at the floor there will 
be a scant thirty inches of width, all of which you 
will need for standing room so that the front of 
the clothes-locker will rise from the floor at the 
point where the latter joins the skin of the ship. 
On the opposite side you will have the same con¬ 
dition, and it is not until the galley front is about 
waist high that there will be really room enough 
for a sink and icebox. The lower space is best 
used for a storage cupboard for staple groceries. 

Your galley requires just three essentials to be 
self-sufficient,—a 12-inch by 16-inch by 6-inch iron* 
sink with a rubber stopper in it and a countersunk 
oak cover, a yacht stove screwed on the sink 
cover, and an icebox. In furnishing the boat 
one is often led into building an icebox into the 
boat by insulating the space included between the 
skin of the ship, the stateroom panel and the gal¬ 
ley front, converting it into a refrigerator,—in 
all $10 to $15 worth of carpenter work at the 
lowest estimate, and the thing will melt ice like 
a hot-box. But if you really want a satisfactory 



288 


MOTOR BOATING 


equipment just go and buy one of those metal 
baby refrigerators costing less than $3. The 
smallest is 12 inches wide by 12 inches high by 16 
inches long and will just fit in the galley as shown 
in the plan and elevation illustrated. It is metal 
lined, with a packing of some kind of felt hermet¬ 
ically soldered in between the inner and outer 
walls, and at one end has a tank compartment 
which just holds a five-cent cake of ice. The tank 
connects with a little faucet so that the melting 
ice water can be drawn off to drink. The balance 
of the icebox has a sliding galvanized iron tray 
and holds enough perishables for quite a bunch of 
hungry mortals. The writer’s party is always 
four, and our little refrigerator keeps all our 
meat, milk, butter and green vegetables in good 
shape. As to the stove, a plain kerosene oil stove 
will answer, provided it has a screw cap to the 
filler. Some of the strictly landlubber ones have 
a contraption for automatically registering the 
height of the oil but this diabolical contrivance 
will spill an unholy sprinkling of good kerosene 
out of place all over the galley whenever a beam 
sea puts a moderate roll on the cruiser. The 
wickless blue flame kerosene stoves are less apt to 
smut the bottom of all your pots and pans, but 
they are too high and chimnified for use about a 


GALLEY AND TOILET ROOM PLAN OF THE “GO-SUM 





AS tfl 


BSESES 




































































































THE GALLEY 


289 


lively and wallowing power boat. The yacht stove 
with the burners down low and the reservoir of 
denatured alcohol perched aloft at the end of a 
cast iron arm is the candy infant to this tar’s 
fancy. Both this and the kerosene contrivances 
have regulatable flame, which is the most impor¬ 
tant point of all in cooking, as your true finnegan 
trims his flame to suit the shorn lamb in the pot as 
carefully as a skipper trims his canvas. 

As regards doping out advice in the matter of 
pots and pans,—suit yourself, and the fewer of 
them the better. Cruising in summer time is 
the place of all places for the chef to do master¬ 
pieces in cold lunches, salads and iced lemonade 
fests, and as a general rule the less of anything 
cooked besides tea and soup for the evening meal 
the better. The same is true for breakfast,—the 
frying-pan, coffee-pot and a single container for 
cereals is all you need on the fire. At dinner in 
the middle of the day a vegetable and a pail of 
spuds should be on the job, after which a quick 
fry of some finny specimen yanked over the ship’s 
side completes the culinary endeavors. For a 
party of four you want one twelve-inch frying 
pan, four pails all nesting, a coffee pot of ample 
proportions and a tea pot ditto. The four pails 
should hang from an appropriate hook over the 


290 


MOTOR BOATING 


stove end of the galley. The fry pan and broiling 
spider hang on another hook, on the for’d galley 
bulkhead, and the two pots are stowed away under 
the deck, hanging from big brass hooks on the 
roof car lines. All the ship’s plates go in a rack 
behind the icebox and all the cups hang from 
rows of hooks on the carlines over the icebox. 
Knives, forks, spoons, napkins and glasses are 
kept in the sink, which is normally clean and 
empty and covered with its oak top, upon which 
sits the stove. These dispositions are economical 
of space and leave the pantry, below the sink and 
icebox, free for staple groceries. Here you keep 
your ham, flitch of bacon, side of codfish, wursts 
of various species, canned goods, cereals, murphs 
and staple vegetables. Also assorted dessert 
bases, such as jellos, prunes, dried apricots, etc. 
It pays to have all these things kept in those large 
light tin cans that you can get at that general 
Army and Navy Stores, the five-and-ten-cent store. 
Otherwise the chef is liable to set the sugar bag 
down on the keroseney decks of the stove base, 
or leave the flour on top of the icebox in a paper 
bag, whence it will be neatly tossed onto the floor 
by the first roller, being promptly joined by the 
maple syrup in the obvious purpose of smearing 
the ship with a paste of unequalled richness. So 


THE GALLEY 


291 


if I were stocking the pantry for a week’s cruise 
I would see the top shelf filled with a shiny row 
of big cans filled with sugar, pancake flour, coffee, 
oatmeal, force and the cured meats. The next 
lower shelf, being narrower, would contain smaller 
cans of tea, macaroni, rice, salt, jello and white 
flour. Also as many cans of fruits and vegetables 
as there was room for. The lowest compartment 
of the pantry has more or less of a wedge shape 
and here is the place for bags of spuds, beets, 
onions, carrots, prunes and other long-winded 
vegetables. 

Through your little icebox will ebb and flow a 
continuous stream of milk bottles, fresh meats, 
fish out of the ship ’s garden, lettuce, cantaloupes, 
sweet corn and fresh green vegetables. The only 
fixed thing will be your three-pound crock of but¬ 
ter which ought to last a week. A good place for 
eggs is in a flat cardboard egg box, stuck in be¬ 
hind the refrigerator where they can neither be 
thrown promiscuously about by the jocular white 
caps nor reduce each other to sorrowful messes 
from the weight of other edibles which is more 
than likely to happen in the icebox. 

The meal regime is determined by two kinds of 
cruise wdiich dictate in the matter more or less. 
There is the cruise where you have a definite 


292 


MOTOR BOATING 


schedule and propose to arrive somewhere some¬ 
time, and for this I generally prefer breakfast 
and supper on board and the heavy meal at mid¬ 
day on shore at some town or yacht club, manag¬ 
ing to arrive at some such haven about time for 
the meal ticket. The other is for a cruise in more 
or less uninhabited waters where the towns look 
like flyspecks on the chart and still more so when 
you come to hunt for them with the naked eye. 
Such cruises can be had anywhere down the At¬ 
lantic Coast in our big sounds and bays behind 
the line of beaches and keys. If properly con¬ 
ducted no one has any idea of going anywhere in 
particular at any specified time. The party are 
usually out to fish, shoot shore birds, tread clams, 
catch crabs and indulge in piratical raids on the 
rural co’hn fields and melon patches. For these 
cruises three straight meals a day on board are 
the only time-table for the chef to live up to, and, 
as everyone is always hungry, it takes a large fat 
man with a calm eye and a clear conscience to 
keep them all full and happy. 

While the latter form of cruise is up and away 
the most fun, let me first recall a few menus taken 
from personally conducted tours of our big water¬ 
ways where could always be made a large town 
with an opulent yacht club to take care of all our 


THE GALLEY 


293 


noon meals for us. For breakfasts: The cruiser 
would have been anchored about five o’clock the 
evening before in some little well-sheltered bay 
and after a cool and calm night the mob would 
usually begin the day with general stampede over 
the side, diving to early religious ceremonies in 
the rathskeller below. That would put an edge on 
already keen appetites and cookie would proceed 
to construct a monstrous feed, assisted by the supe 
for the day, while the rest scrubbed bright work 
or any other job the skipper saw fit to order. The 
chef always set a handsome table with silver and 
napkin at each man’s plate around the tiny fold¬ 
ing table in the saloon. During thundering hot 
spells our breakfasts were fruit, force, coffee, 
omelettes and one vegetable. Here are a few of 
the menus: (1) Iced cantaloupe, force, coffee, 
toasted hardtack, plain omelettes, French fried 
potatoes. (2) Strawberries and cream, force, cof¬ 
fee, bacon, creamed potatoes. (3) Blackberries, 
baker’s rolls, oatmeal, coffee, fried ham, hominy. 
(4) Yellow harvest apples, cream of wheat, coffee, 
fried eggs, rice. (5) Sliced oranges, rice and 
cream, coffee, Varginny pancakes, country sau¬ 
sages, maple syrup, creamed potatoes. (6) 
Peaches and cream, force, coffee, toast, fried por- 
gies, hominy. None of these meals required the 


294 


MOTOR BOATING 


chef to do more than boil coffee, fry one meat and 
work up one staple vegetable. The scarab, as the 
assistant chef and scullion for the day was dubbed, 
prepared the fruit, set the table, got out the 
glasses and filled them with ice water and gen¬ 
erally made himself useful until the chef himself 
called all hands to mess, not having been over 
twenty minutes since first lighting the burners. 
And what meals they were in the cool and breezy 
cabin, with the morning sun shining in through 
every porthole and the early seas just lapping 
against the ship’s sides! 

To prepare most of the above commodities is 
nearly as easy as the Esquimos’ idea of cooking 
musk-ox,—just add the hot water and serve. Cof¬ 
fee, for instance: Ladle a cupful of water into 
the pot for each nose at the table and dump in a 
palmful of coffee grounds for each cup. Stick 
over the burner while you get your rice or oat¬ 
meal on to boil. Presently the coffee comes to a 
violent head, boils over and nearly puts out the 
burner. Rescue by turning down the burner 
forthwith until it merely simmers, which it should 
do for ten minutes more. Rice will need the big¬ 
gest of your pails with half a cupful of rice in the 
bottom, and plenty of water, and should boil furi¬ 
ously for half an hour, at the end of which time 


THE GALLEY 


295 


turn down the burners and let her steam dry. 
Early in the process give the pot a swipe with the 
cook spoon so as to dislodge any particles of rice 
that may have gotten stuck to the bottom as they 
will surely scorch and spoil the mess. Oatmeal 
requires two things to be parfait: judgment in 
proportioning water to oats so as not to get it too 
sloppy and five to ten minutes of real fire heat 
with assiduous stirring to prevent scorching. A 
handful of oats to each person in a pot of salted 
water just deep enough to cover the oats will do 
to start with. If she gets too thick it is easy to 
add more water, but if too thin it’s a long slow job 
boiling down to a proper thickness. Frying jobs 
require also much judgment in handling the flame. 
Bacon wants a quick hot flame, fishing out the 
slices the minute they are done and putting a 
couple on each man’s plate. Fish need ten min¬ 
utes’ slow frying in bacon fat after rolling in egg 
and corn meal. Allow five minutes to each side 
and then turn up the burner and brown quickly. 
When done the flesh is firm and white. To make 
your omelettes, break two eggs to each man into a 
pail and beat vigorously with a fork, add half a 
cup of water if there are eight eggs in the game, 
the function of the water being to make the ome¬ 
lette fluffy. Wipe the frying pan with a rind of 


296 


MOTOR BOATING 


bacon and pour in enough of the beaten eggs to 
cover the bottom of the pan a quarter of an inch 
deep. Run a knife under her, now and then, to 
keep from scorching. Flop over one half on the 
other when top of the egg mixture begins to dry 
and turn light yellow. You can run them off one 
every three minutes. 

For evening meals on these “civilized” cruises, 
so to speak, we served ‘ ‘ tea, ’ ’ which is to say that 
commodity was about the only thing cooked. 
However, the chef usually got out the frying pan 
and gave us French fried potatoes, fried mush or 
fried rice cakes to go with our cold sliced meat, 
lettuce salad, bread and butter, cake, lemonade 
and cheese. 

But crowded with still more joyful recollections 
than these were the uncivilized cruises where a 
fleet of canoes was towed astern and the cruiser 
was sufficient unto herself, never anchoring except 
in some woods-bordered uninhabited bay, and 
spending often days together on some good shoot¬ 
ing or fishing ground. Those were the days when 
a dollar was worth nothing except to waylay some 
passing iceboat or to buy eggs and milk at some 
shore farmhouse. The ship’s garden produced 
abundant fish, clams, oysters, crabs and shore 
birds, or, if on fresh water, we had pickerel, bass, 


THE GALLEY 


297 


sunfish and perch, there was water-cress salad 
with mayonnaise dressing, and frogs legs a la 
mushroom, d la terrapin and a la backwoods,— 
which is plain fried frogs legs. 

A solemn responsibility devolves upon the chef 
in such a cruise,—that of providing three square 
meals a day of such heroic proportions as to make 
eight ordinary domestic feeds. For every one is 
active and full of exercise on such a trip, as the 
problem of filling the larder keeps every one on 
the hustle. Bathing, paddling, fishing, foraging 
for crustaceans and mollusks, and marsh shooting 
are all strong-arm games, and all engender wolfish 
appetites. Going on fresh water is quite as stren¬ 
uous ; there are side trips for trout, bait castings 
from the canoes for bass, catfish yanked over the 
side with a white frog’s-leg for bait in the stilly 
night, and frogging expeditions in the dark of the 
moon with a jack-lantern and a shepherd’s crook 
made out of four feet of arrow wood and a stout 
pickerel hook. Our usual plan on such cruises is 
to have a reasonably heavy breakfast, say a quart 
of berries apiece, a bowl of cereal, four cups of 
coffee, thirteen flap jacks, two whole fish and a 
bucket of creamed spuds per man. Then a fried 
steak spread at midday with biscuits and crisp 
fried potatoes on the side, and finally a grand 


298 


MOTOR BOATING 


French wash-out for supper, comprising a bucket 
of soup per hand, tea, toast, salad, and, say, a J 
watermelon apiece for a finisher. If the chef lives 
up to this scale of things the crew will not come 
running in at seven bells for a smack. Heavy 
gumbo soups are one of the most hearty, healthy 
and economical articles for the final meal of the 
day. They generally clean out the icebox, as 
everything is grist to the soup mill, and are not 
only appetising, but plumb easy to do. Cut up 
potatoes, onions, carrots, greens of all kinds into 
small pieces and set them to bubbling in the larg¬ 
est pail you have, an hour before supper. Put in 
all meat bones, left-over pieces of steak, bird 
ghosts, etc., and just before serving add in a 
couple of beef concentrated capsules. Season 
sparingly, as the capsules will add considerable 
salt of their own. Long before supper time the 
whiffs of aroma from that soup will have the 
whole crew waiting around the hatchway with 
their tongues hanging down to their knees! 

I have already given some hints on fish. To do 
crabs heave them into a pail of boiling water, 
throw in a couple of sage leaves to give them a 
tone and fish them out in twenty minutes. The 
best recipe for soft clams that I know of is for 
the crew to flourish around on some sandy bar at 


THE GALLEY 


299 


low tide until twenty-five of them to each man are 
apprehended, clean out sand, put them in the 
swash bucket, clap on the big broiling spider, and 
invert them over the frying pan. Start them 
heavenwards with a little water in the frying pan. 
As the steam ascends the clams will loosen up, 
dropping their liquor into the pan. Steam until 
the last clam gives up his inside information and 
serve with a cup of the liquor on the side, to 
which has been added a spoon of butter and a 
dash of pepper. Believe me, it’s a swell feed! 

Shore birds simply need gentling flat with an 
axe and broiling in the spider. Butter and pepper 
all over. Fresh water fish are all fried in corn 
meal and bacon fat, fresh out of the water if small 
and split open and broiled in the spider if large. 
Almost all the fresh water ducks and upland birds 
are first parboiled fifteen minutes and then roast¬ 
ed on a spit over the burner with little pieces of 
bacon skewered into them. Salt water ducks are 
the better for being roasted with a peeled lemon 
inside which condiment removes the fishy flavor. 
All birds should hang at least a day before using, 
but for cat’s sake don ’t hang them near the state¬ 
room or a colony of old settlers will sample you 
the following night and you’ll spend the silent 
hours looking for trouble. 


300 


MOTOR BOATING 


Frogs are not noisy except when overburdened 
with sentimental emotions concerning the stars 
and the moon, but when these latter draw forth 
the distressing sounds that some old he-one 
scrapes out, down there in the marsh, it’s time to 
go and get him and have frog’s legs for breakfast. 
You light the jack-lantern, pull the canoe along¬ 
side and silently step in. Noiselessly you slip 
across the lily pads, pausing now and then to allow 
the batrachian to unburden a little more senti¬ 
ment. Now you are quite close, and you shoot 
out the lantern ray. There he is, just behind 
those cat tails. The gaff is stretched stealthily 
over his back; there is a quick yank and a sur¬ 
prised squeal,—and frog’s-legs for breakfast for 
one. Repeat until the entire ship’s crew is mus¬ 
tered. Next morning parboil the legs fifteen min¬ 
utes, dip in a beaten egg, roll in flour or corn 
meal, fry to a crisp brown and serve with a 
squeeze of lemon and a dash of cress. On either 
fresh or salt water you can come pretty nearly 
living off the land if the waters are fit to cruise 
in, provided that no one has the travel mania and 
that no member of the company wants to sacrifice 
the sports of the hour to any infernal get-some- 
where-else schedule. 

There is a mineral commodity at the basis of all 


THE GALLEY 


301 


these culinary operations, viz.: common or garden 
water, H 2 0, which will cause you more worry 
than all the rest of the edibles and drinkables put 
together. You can’t carry it in a pail because 
the next wave is sure to invert that container all 
over the Brussels carpeting in the stateroom and 
slop it gently into the beans, causing the latter 
to swell and spread mightily. You can’t carry 
it in a tank on the roof, such tank being in the 
way of everybody’s head besides making the 
cruiser top heavy. If you put it under the floor 
of the galley then you need some sort of a pump 
to get it out again. I described in the chapter on 
yacht plumbing a home-made force-pump which 
was very efficient in persuading the water in the 
tank under the floor to betake itself somewhere 
else. In the elevation shown herewith is another 
tank scheme, which consists of putting air pres¬ 
sure on the tank with an ordinary bicycle pump 
and a check valve in the air pipe. The tank should 
not be filled more than two-thirds full, and, with 
the bicycle pump located in almost any handy 
place in the galley, a few strokes on it will put a 
fine-and-dandy pressure on the tank which will 
make both the faucets in bathroom and galley 
operative for some little time. The tank itself 
should have solid wooden blocks both on top and 




302 


MOTOR BOATING 


bottom covers, not only to prevent getting adrift 
in a seaway, but to guard against some vigorous 
brother pumping air into the tank with all elan 
of a man filling a bicycle tire—and bulging the 
tank! As both the top and bottom of the tank 
are flat they would immediately swell out and 
spring leaks around the edges unless braced by 
outside blocks. The tank should have a filler pipe 
with 1-inch screw cap flush with the galley floor. 


i 


CHAPTER VIII 


GOING INTO COMMISSION 

Spring, to my mind, is always associated with 
two phenomena of Nature,—the click of calking 
hammers and the smell of fresh tar, and oakum. 
One might also mention Lent and the small boy 
playing marbles along the village street in the 
warm afternoon sun, as you can always see this 
also at the season of the Calking Mauls. And at 
the end of every street leading down to the bay 
will be the huge bowsprit and tall spars of some 
big three-master whose sides are being stuffed 
with oakum as she rides high out of water on the 
marine railway. In a stroll among the various 
yards along the shore you will come across, here 
and there, beaches which have been a refuge for 
motor boats during the winter, and now is the sea¬ 
son when every one of them will be inhabited by 
their happy owners, blissfully overhauling the be¬ 
loved craft, opening up cabins and berths to dry 
out the winter damp, scraping spars for a new 
coat of varnish, and generally playing with every¬ 
thing in sight. It is indeed time to get off the 
303 


304 


MOTOR BOATING 


winter tarpaulin and go over the hull with a crit¬ 
ical eye. You will find that she has swelled open 
so that you can throw a dog through the cracks, 
but by the same token she will swell shut again, 
so there is not much to worry about in that. Pay 
the seams with paint and give them a good rub-in 
with white lead putty and you will be ready for 
operation No. 2 of the going into commission, 
which will be to go over all the hard, ridgy edges 
of last year ’s seams with a scraper and smooth her 
down fine preparatory to a rough coat of sand¬ 
papering. If the paint is very old, consisting of 
several years ’ layers, it will have begun to curl and 
peel and you are in for a torch-and-scraper job. 
Use a gasoline hot-blast torch with 76 test gasoline 
and a three-cornered steel scraper. It takes two 
men to do the job, as one man needs to apply full- 
power elbow grease to the scraper and he should 
follow up the man with the torch as fast as he 
softens the paint with his heat. It takes all the 
torch man’s energy and attention to soften the 
paint without burning the vessel likewise. 

As a general thing, your motorboat will not 
need this heroic treatment but once in a consid¬ 
erable span of years—if you own her that long. 
After your rough coat of sandpapering, followed 
by a smooth coat, she is ready for the paint. As 


GOING INTO COMMISSION 305 


I never use any other color than white for the 
outside of a boat, I shall simply give here the best 
mixtures to get a real white finish on her. I give 
her first two coats of house-painter’s ‘ 4 Inside 
White,” which you can mix yourself or, better, 
buy it mixed from any first-class paint-manufac¬ 
turing concern. After these coats have dried I 
put on one coat of “Yacht White.” This is a 
quick-drying mineral paint, much like the common 
copper paint used on the bottom. The cans of it 
come 62 cents a quart can, with the paint all in 
a heap at the bottom of the can and the liquor 
above. This liquor is precisely the same essential 
quick-drying oil as is used in the copper paint, and 
it will not stir and hold the paint as does linseed 
oil. As a consequence, the novice will usually stir 
until he is tired and then proceed to paint. The 
application will be nearly transparent. He will 
see every dirt mark and blemish on the house 
white underneath and, in fact, this new “Yacht 
White” makes the color distinctly dirtier than 
before. This keeps up to a disgusting degree, un¬ 
til more than half the liquor is gone, when pres¬ 
ently, in response to repeated stirrings, the paint 
is a fine heavy white, making the house-paint look 
yellow by contrast. You once more get that 
motor-boaty smile that won’t rub off, but it soon 


306 


MOTOR BOATING 


fades as you discover that there is now not enough 
liquor and you are shortly reduced to painting out 
thick gobs of white mud which require infinite la¬ 
bor with the brush to spread. All this misery can 
be circumnavigated by simply using two paint 
pails, one the can containing the “Yacht White” 
in its state of original sin, and the other a can 
in which you pour off the liquor and add as wanted 
to keep the paint of the right and Christian con¬ 
sistency. You will find that there is just the right 
amount of each to use every bit of it in a fine, 
heavy, snowy white. 

The next job is the below waterline work. 
Scrape all last season’s mud and barnacles off, 
rub white lead putty in the seams, smooth her off 
with a scraper and then you are ready for the 
waterline. Get enough stout mason’s twine to 
go entirely around the boat and nail a lath across 
the stern. Set her bow exactly plumb, and level 
up the lath across the stern so that it comes ex¬ 
actly square with the stem of the boat. Nail a 
second lath across the stem and set it exactly 
square, or, if the stem has a brass guard, set the 
horizontal lath on a couple of thin uprights. This 
lath, or rather straight edge, should be long 
enough so that you can see all around the side of 
the boat as you go out along it. To snap the 



MUSHROOM MOORING ANCHOR 


CAN, CORK AND BARREL 
BUOYS 


ANCHOR BITT AND CAPSTAN, 
COMBINED 


MOORING TACKLE 
































































































































































































GOING INTO COMMISSION 307 


waterline pull the twine taut from bow to stern, 
while you go out and sight across the for’d and 
aft straight edges. The string should always lie 
just above your line of sight and the other man 
must pull it up or lower it if it sags below or raises 
out of your line of sight. Tack the line here and 
there and paint from it down. You can use either 
green or brown copper paint, using two pails, as 
for yacht white. It will dry in a few hours; in 
fact, you can go overboard just about as soon as 
the last bit of it is on. 

The next job of painting is the varnish work. 
All of last year’s will be black and furry, besides 
which, with all your care, there will be some 
smears of this year’s white, to say nothing of the 
specks which have flown off the brush bristles. 
Get a few broken panes of glass and break them 
artistically to give you long curved glass daggers 
(sit down on the pane to get the really finest ef¬ 
fects), and use these on fenderwales, taffrails, 
spars, cabin-eaves, etc., until you have the clean 
oak once more. Follow with rough and smooth 
sandpapering, and then immediately with first- 
class spar varnish. For inside work any good 
marine or floor varnish will do. To get a good 
mahogany stain use cherry and varnish over it 
on red oak. For stateroom, bathroom, etc., good 


308 


MOTOR BOATING 


white enamel is best in the long run. It is easy 
to clean and stays so, so that an inadvertent 
greasy thumb will not leave an irrevocable blem¬ 
ish, as it will on plain white lead finish. And if 
you want to trim up the corners of carlines, etc., 
with gold paint, why go ahead!—I don’t care— 
only the less of it the better, and none at all looks 
fine. 

The details of getting overboard are neither 
many nor lengthy. In order to avoid a general 
wetting down of the boat and everything in her 
by a prolonged soaking during the swelling of the 
planks, it is well to throw six or seven pailfuls 
aboard of her for several days before launching 
and let these swell up the garboard and second 
and third strakes. To get her into the water you 
can run her down at low tide on skids with rollers 
under her cradle, and let the tide come up and get 
her, or if there is no tide, put on seven-league 
boots and set a couple of skidways by nailing side 
spikes to 2 x 10 planks and then securing them 
to the mud bottom by putting your weight on the 
skid until the spikes are home in the mud. Use 
iron pipe rollers with lengths of marlin tied to 
them so that they can be hauled up as fast as they 
pass out at the bow. 

Once overboard the all-important point of a 


GOING INTO COMMISSION 309 


berth and a mooring for her must be settled—if 
you are wise this has already been done. Almost 
everywhere on salt water you have both tide and 
the prevailing lee-shore gale to look out for. 
Along the Atlantic seaboard the worst thing we 
have is the nor faster, which usually blows 
viciously for three or four days and will make any 
sheet of water over a mile wide a proposition to 
be regarded with respect. The tide is equally im¬ 
portant as the two of them together will surely 
put you ashore if by any possible means the 
anchor can be started or anything in your whole 
mooring gear broken. Study your proposed berth 
carefully, particularly at full rush of ebb and 
spring tides, before choosing it. Also, look out 
for your neighbors and keep out of the probable 
drift of other boats larger than yourself. If your 
boat is any size at all moor her out where there is 
some sea room, the more the better, and keep 
away from all docks and floats. 

Better put down a two-hundred pound mush¬ 
room anchor with a chain and buoy, and let her 
ride to it out where she can’t possibly foul any¬ 
thing. There is not a gale that blows that any 
good motor boat cannot weather if she can hold 
her head to it. And there is a good deal more to 
this mooring equipment than appears on the sur- 



310 


MOTOR BOATING 


face. To begin with the mushroom anchor. The 
plain ones run nine cents a pound black iron, and 
twelve cents galvanized, and you must have the 
latter for salt water. There is a fancy variety 
with a bulb at the end of the handle shank, a cast 
eye on the back of the mushroom for a tripping 
rope, and a shackle pinned directly to the shank. 
All of which I do not like. As the mush is to re¬ 
main in the mud all the season the tripping rope 
would rot long before you will need to use it; 
the bulb in the shank may help her ride at first, 
but any proper mushroom knows that its first 
duty in life is to dig into the mud and pile a cubic 
yard of bottom in front of itself, out of which 
sticks the shank, as rigid as a crow-bar, so of what 
use is the bulb? As for the shackle pin there is 
sure to be a great deal of rotary motion to it dur¬ 
ing the season as she rides, which will wear the 
pin more than if the shackle is in the chain where 
it should be. Of what use is a stout one-and-a-lialf- 
inch shank on the mushroom if it is only backed 
up by a thin one-half-inch shackle-pin at the end 
of the shank? The simple mushroom with a large 
ring forged in the end of the shank is less apt 
to have fatal weak spots to develop during storms 
and let you get ashore. Into the forged anchor 
ring goes the anchor chain shackle, and its pin 


GOING INTO COMMISSION 311 


passes through the eye of a mooring swivel which 
should be of wrought iron galvanized—malleable 
will not do. The swivel takes the last link in the 
chain, which you should have the blacksmith forge 
together or else use a pin chain shackle with the 
ends of the pin burred over. 

The chain should be one-fourth inch for boats 
30 feet and under, five-sixteenths inch for 40-foot, 
and three-eighths inch for 60-foot craft. Under 
the ring of the buoy goes a second pin shackle, a 
swivel, and a screw shackle. The screw shackles 
have an eye in the pin, not only for unscrewing 
with a fid or a large nail, but for securing against 
coming unscrewed by running a couple of turns of 
galvanized iron wire through the eye and around 
one leg of the shackle. They should be of wrought 
iron galvanized. 

As to size and choice of mooring buoys you have 
as wide a range as in the styles of female hats 
ashore. There are three breeds of can buoys, 
running from $2.50 up to $4 in galvanized iron, 
in 10 x 12 and 12 x 15 for the plain can buoy, and 
13 x 22 for the conical buoy. The latter have stir¬ 
rups riveted to the shell, and the plain can buoy 
has a pipe passing through the center soldered to 
the can, while a rod passing through the pipe has 
the mooring ring above and the swivel on the 



312 


MOTOR BOATING 


lower end, thus needing only a screw shackle for 
attaching the chain. 

The cork buoys run from $3 up to $10 and come 
in lozenge, cylinder and tub shapes. There are 
two styles of barrel buoys, one with rope bridle 
and mooring bend, and the other with galvanized 
iron straps with an eye at top and bottom. They 
cost from $1.50 up. Finally there is the new cedar 
spar buoy painted in red and white stripes and 
provided with large wrought iron shackle riveted 
to the buoy, with burred-over iron through-bolts. 
This buoy cannot be stolen and stands high out 
of water so that it is easy to ‘ ‘ pick up . 9 9 

A good many motorboatists have, by right of 
plain purchase, become possessed of a beer keg, 
and, as here is a grand chance to put it to work 
once more, a few directions will not be out of 
place. A rope bridle for it is open to the objec¬ 
tion that it will not stay on the keg with any cer¬ 
tainty, besides which it can be cut and your buoy 
stolen, giving you the dickens 9 own time finding 
your chain and mush at the bottom of the pickle. 
A better plan is to take a bit and brace and cut 
two-inch holes in opposite sides of the keg, and 
drive into it a length of %-inch gas pipe, guiding 
it straight to the opposite hole with an iron rod. 
This pipe should be an inch longer than the diame- 


GOING INTO COMMISSION 318 


ter of the keg and you should cut an inch of thread 
on it at each end. After driving in, with half an 
inch sticking out of each side, run down a washer 
and a locknut with a turn of cotton soaked in white 
lead putty under the washer. Tighten up the nuts 
and thus make the keg waterproof. Don’t cut 
your holes so that one of them is in the hung. She 
will get full of water some day, and then you will 
want to start the bung. The next move is to get 
a piece of %-inch iron and have the blacksmith 
turn and forge a 4-inch mooring ring in one end 
of it and cut a thread on the other. Slip this rod 
through the buoy, run the thread into an empty 
turnbuckle stirrup, put on a nut inside the turn- 
buckle and jam it fast. Your chain shackle takes 
the other end of the turnbuckle. 

On the boat end of the mooring we find a 42-inch‘ 
mooring chain to which is usually bent the end 
of the riding rope, so as to be able to veer out all 
you want in emergency, etc. 

In crowded waters, such as are most of our har¬ 
bors along the Atlantic Coast, there is, however, 
a fair chance of your boat being stolen, so that it 
pays to have a long mooring chain, say seven 
feet, pin-shackles to the mooring ring and a pair 
of gaff topsail sisterhooks at the inboard end. 
These can be closed around a ring on the anchor 



314 


MOTOR BOATING 


post and a small padlock run in the eye, which 
locks both sisterhooks. Such a rig is not apt to 
be tampered with by any ordinary river thief. If 
they are really after your boat of course no chain 
will amount to much, as they will bring along a 
cold chisel and cut it on their own anchor shank. 

In getting up either chain or rope ground tackle, 
there are two handy little rigs especially adapta¬ 
ble to motor boats of 35 feet and over. There is 
the combined windlass and bitt for rope, which is 
made in five sizes, from $9 up, in galvanized iron; 
and there is the vertical chain windlass lately put 
on the market. The first of these screws to the 
deck by four stout bolts passing through its base, 
and has two niggerheads to the left and on top, 
and the right-hand side is the windlass drum, 
which is 2% inches diameter in the smallest size. 
It can be worked with the right hand while the left 
takes up slack and belays around the bitts when 
the anchor is away. The vertical chain windlass, 
which goes under the trade name of the “ Viking ,’ 9 
is a compact little thing, 10 inches in diameter by 
3% inches high in the size for 5/16-inch chain, or 
7-inch x 2%-inch for %-inch chain. It costs about 
$9 and $18 for the two sizes, has complete locks 
and trips, and can be worked with one hand, leav¬ 
ing the other free to steer when getting under 


GOING INTO COMMISSION 315 


way. It will go on the deck of any motor boat, 
as shown in the cut. 

Here also may be mentioned chain and rope deck 
pipes, which come from 1% inches up, price about 
50 cents in galvanized iron. They run up to six 
inches, but the sizes for motor boats are 1% 
inches, 2 inches, 2*4 inches and 2 y 2 inches, de¬ 
pending upon the size of the chain. You want 
one for each bower, and they screw to the deck 
on each side of the bitts over the chain locker. 

In purchasing mooring fittings always get first- 
class stuff such as one finds at some one of the big 
South street (N. Y.) ship chandleries. Economy 
doesn’t pay when you are up against real trouble, 
as the mooring is every time a nor faster or a 
sou’easter blows in. You may lose $2,000 worth 
of boat for $10 worth of mooring tackle some fine 
night when you are comfortably in bed while the 
little cruiser is fighting it out all alone out there in 
the gale and the whitecaps. Cheap mooring out¬ 
fits are the principal reason why so very many 
motor boats hunt the beach or go adrift every time 
there is a northeast blow. 

Planting the mooring is a matter which cannot 
be gone at in a light and blithesome spirit, or un¬ 
dertaken by three men in a small dink with a 
mushroom that weighs from 150 to 250 pounds, 



316 


MOTOR BOATING 


and then there is a neat 60-foot chain attached 
to it and a dainty watch charm of a buoy which 
may be one-half the size of the dink itself. Where¬ 
fore, if anybody is rash enough to go out with this 
equipment and attempt to usher the mushroom 
over the bow the denouement is apt to put the dink 
standing on her own nose with the crew floating 
in picturesque groups on the surface of the briny. 
If you are going to plant the mooring with your 
motor boat, get out and anchor directly over where 
the mooring is to be and keep at it until she is 
exactly where you want her. Better choose a 
quiet day for this operation as otherwise the 
cruiser is liable to gambol around in the most pro¬ 
voking manner imaginable. 

Once over the resting place for the mushroom, 
the next problem is to get her down, and to this 
end a respectable length of three-quarter-inch 
rope slipped once through the mushroom ring is 
the proper caper. Make one end of this rope fast 
to the capstan bitts so that you can gradually pay 
out the rope with a round turn around the 
capstan. Get the mushroom over the counter as 
quickly as may be and cast loose the fast end of 
the rope, take both ends with you in the dink, get¬ 
ting some one to row you in the direction of the 
strongest tide. A little energetic work on the rope 


GOING INTO COMMISSION 317 


will get the mushroom into position pretty thor¬ 
oughly and then you can slip your lowering rope 
and haul the loose end through the hoop. The 
buoy you should put overboard with its chain at¬ 
tached. The length of the chain should be about 
five times the depth of the water at the highest 
known tide which you have ever seen at that place. 

Needless to say that any attempt to lower the 
250-pound mushroom by its own chain from your 
cruiser is sure to result in an assortment of sur¬ 
prises and possibly a leg or a finger or two of the 
crew going overboard with the chain. It can be 
done, however, if you have a chain windlass. 

As regards getting the mushroom up again at 
the end of the season, unless you have a pretty 
powerful windlass, better get some big oyster boat 
or tug to get her out for you, as she is liable to 
make quite a journey into the mud during her 
season’s stay below decks. 





CHAPTER IX 


HAULING OUT FOR THE WINTER 

The only motor boat owner I ever heard of who 
didn’t have to haul out was Noah. He had a cinch. 
When the Ark went aground on Ararat Point, 
Captain Noah didn’t go into a frenzy and bawl 
at Ham, “You black pirate, shove for your life 
or I’ll carve the heart out of ye! ” nor did he shout, 
“Full speed astern! For cat’s sake back her!” 
at Japhet. No, he simply remarked: “Boys, 
they’ve turned the water off and I guess we’re 
ashore on the steeple of the First Baptist Church. 
Don’t get excited; just hang up all the animals 
by their halters, as there’s going to be some slope 
here when this tide gets to going down! We’ve 
only got five hundred fathoms under our stern V 9 

But what goes down must always come up 
again, as the power cruiser owner remarked to his 
200-pound anchor, so nowadays one has to haul 
out to get above the reach of tide and ice. We 
also have to lay our boats up for the winter—and 
thereby hangs a tale. 

For there is really a good deal to it, getting a 
318 


HAULING OUT 


319 


thirty to fifty-foot power cruiser out of the drink, 
protecting her from the snows and ice of January, 
and putting her interior and engine into shape to 
stand the long months of dampness and disuse. 
There are half a dozen ways of hauling out, each 
fitting the pocketbook of some particular kind of 
human, and his own peculiar worries on the sub¬ 
ject. For the city man there is nothing for it but 
pay your little hauling-out fee—anywhere from 
$5 to $25; and pay your little storage bill—any¬ 
where from $2 to $10 per month. For the dweller 
in some small city beside the river or harbor there 
are two ways: Either haul out and store some¬ 
where along the beach where motor boats most do 
congregate, or have her run out on a marine rail¬ 
way, meet her with a truck and keep her in your 
own backyard. This has the advantage that you 
can, and will, putter at her off and on all winter 
long, and so get a great deal more work done on 
her than if she lies forsaken and forgotten down 
on the beach. 

If you are rich, and fortunate enough to own 
a place fronting on the water with its own beach, 
it is a good plan to build your own marine railway 
leading up to the boathouse, wherein the boat can 
be kept all winter, and worked in out of the 
weather. A railway suitable for a thirty to forty- 



320 


MOTOR BOATING 


foot boat need not be a very expensive matter, 
about $50, and it will be used several times a sea¬ 
son for cleaning bottom, new coats of copper 
paint, repacking stern gland, etc., besides loaning 
the use of it to friends, hauling out, and putting 
into commission. Unless a large boat has a pretty 
strong skeg and rudder-hanger, it strains her to 
beach her often for such work, and one never gets 
a satisfactory job done under such conditions. 
The best and simplest small marine railway I ever 
saw was made of two forty-foot runs of five-inch 
by eight-inch long-leaf yellow pine carsills, spaced 
five feet apart by seven-eighths-inch iron rods, 
with long threads on their ends which allowed a 
nut and washer on the inside and outside of each 
sill. These latter were laid flat and the rods 
placed about ten feet apart. On the sills went a 
three-inch channel-iron with the lips looking up, 
spiked to the sills through holes in the web at 
three-foot intervals. There were two lengths of 
this marine railway, the second of which ran out 
under water and was hauled out after the boat 
was put afloat again. A snubbing post behind the 
boathouse provided an anchorage for the falls, 
which led down through the boathouse and hooked 
onto the ring of the boat cradle. One two-sheave 
and one three-sheave hook-block of one-inch rope 



PITTING THE “ADELAIDE” OVERIiOARD ALONE WITH A PAIR OF SHEARS 



CONSTRUCTION OF CRADLE AND WAYS FOR HAULING OUT A 
POWER CRUISER i 


VC 





































HAULING OUT 


321 


size sufficed for tackle. The cradle, as shown in 
the sketch, is very simply made with two twenty- 
foot lengths of four-inch by six-inch yellow pine, 
carrying a cradle-beam in the middle and two 
crossbeams at the ends. These are all four inches 
by six inches, bolted through the four-inch by six- 
inch stringers, and the forward cross-tie is pro¬ 
vided with a three-quarter-inch ringbolt. The 
blocks of the cradle are made sliding by lag-screw¬ 
ing one-half-inch by three-inch iron straps on at 
the rear, and one-half-inch by three-inch flats at 
the nose, thus also tying the component pieces of 
four-inch by six-inch which make up the side block 
together. There are also two rings on each side 
of the blocks for the clamping ropes. The simplest 
and best rolling gear for such a railway is just 
four two-inch extra-heavy iron-pipe rollers six 
feet long. 

To haul out, the boat is floated into the cradle 
at high tide, and the clamp ropes passed around 
her and pulled taut until the blocks come snug 
under each side. They are then crossed and tied 
over her deck so she can’t get away. The cradle 
should be set on the railway and tied down with 
light twine at low tide, or else weighted with 
rocks and run down if there is no tide. The rollers 


322 


MOTOR BOATING 


should have short lengths of marlin tied to them, 
to get them back when clear astern. 

But, for the great majority of motor boat own¬ 
ers, it is a case of haul out at some handy place 
along the beach where the boat will be out of the 
reach of tide and ice during the winter. For such, 
a home-made cradle and improvised railway is the 
thing. Get some four-inch by four-inch rough 
hemlock and lay a track down the beach on about 
four-foot centers. Carry it on down at low tide 
thirty feet beyond high-water mark and stake 
down the rails. If there isn’t any tide you can 
nail on the stakes and then sink the rails, wear¬ 
ing hip boots to do the job. For the cradle you 
will want two frames like the sketch, Fig. 2, which 
are bolted to two twenty-foot four-inch by four- 
inch timbers. A block and falls anchored to a 
tree or post in the bank, and catching her by the 
anchor post on the boat, will do the trick of per¬ 
suading her out of the wet. The rolling stock will 
be pipe or wood rollers “borried” from the yacht 
club or from some rigger or furniture storage 
company. 

Once out of the water—let me whisper it in 
thine ear—the bilge of your boat is not only dirty; 
it’s really filthy! That’s the first thing to go for, 
after the stores are out and engine and toilet 


HAULING OUT 


323 


drained. More boats are ruined by leaving 
mouldy puddles of water around the ribs in the 
bilge all winter than by any other thing. Above 
all have a close-fitting canvas cover on her. Bet¬ 
ter turn her over bottom side up if you can’t af¬ 
ford one. More about this later. 

One usually hauls out late in November. There 
are lots of days in October too good to lose, when 
there are hunting expeditions galore, and also the 
fish are large and fat in that month. Keep in com¬ 
mission all October, even though your family has 
to order coal for your house in the first week. 
Salt water freezes somewhere about twenty-eight 
degrees, so you are reasonably safe until Novem¬ 
ber, provided that you be sure to drain the cylin¬ 
der jackets when done with the engine. 

Once out of commission, drain the engine thor¬ 
oughly, take the water pump apart so as to be 
sure that no water is left in pockets or over check 
valves. Most engines have out-of-commission 
plugs to drain dead pockets when laid up for the 
winter. Start these carefully with your pipe 
wrench or you are likely to twist off the nub of 
the plug. I usually run the engine dry for a few 
minutes after hauling out. It heats the entire en¬ 
gine up and vaporizes any water lying in exhaust 
connections, silencer, etc., besides thoroughly dry- 


324 


MOTOR BOATING 


ing the jackets, etc. After that, drive wooden 
plugs into the exhaust where it comes through the 
skin of the ship, and also into the jacket water 
overflow, and replace the pump checks. 

The engines will have considerable free acid in 
the soot of the combustion chamber and on top 
of the piston, which will corrode the cylinder 
walls. Take off the spark plugs and pour in a 
little kerosene, following with an inch or so of 
engine oil. Replace the spark plugs with ordinary 
iron ones, and give the engine a few turns. All 
the outside bright work of engine and clutch 
should have a coat of white lead tallow paint, 
made by mixing half-and-half white lead paint and 
tallow to form a sort of grease, which you can 
paint on all over the bright work. It will stay on 
all winter, and will come off with a wet rag dipped 
in gasoline or kerosene. This should go on over 
all exposed brass work, the shaft and clutch, etc. 
Go outside and pull out all the packing from the 
stern-gland, and give the shaft and box inside a 
good coat of the lead-tallow paint. If there is any 
possible way—and there ought to be—to pull off 
the screw propeller without unshipping the rud¬ 
der, some one is liable to come along with a hand 
wrench and “borry” it some dark night. Better, 
therefore, get it off and send it up to the house, 


TRANSVERSE SECTION AND DETAILS OF IIAULING-OUT WAYS 









































































































































HAULING OUT 325 

tying the key to it, and paint the shaft end with 
white lead tallow. 

All the ignition devices and batteries should be 
taken out and stored in your house during the 
winter. It is fatal to electrical apparatus to be 
left in a damp boat all winter, especially the spark 
coils. It is best also to take the clutch apart so 
as to tallow the friction surfaces and prevent 
them rusting up. All stores and movable brass- 
work should be kept up at the house through the 
winter. Also all bedding, rugs, cushions, mat¬ 
tresses, life preservers, sails, awnings, etc., as 
these will surely mould if left in the boat. Be 
sure that there is no water in any of the tanks and 
plumbing and pump the toilet dry, and open up 
both its inlet and discharge valves to get all water 
out of pockets, siphons, etc. 

You are now ready to go at the bilge. A favor¬ 
ite ballast consists of red building brick in the 
bottom between the ribs, and gravel ballast bags in 
the bilge, under the seats and berths. The red 
bricks being porous, soak up and hold any loose 
water in the bilge and thus increase their effective 
weight. But, in the winter, the bilge floor should 
come up and the bricks come out, and the whole 
skin of the ship be cleaned with a sponge. When 
it dries, the skin and the ribs should have two 


326 


MOTOR BOATING 


coats of white lead paint, and then the floor can 
be put down again, leaving the bricks outside until 
next season. 

The matter of the canvas boat cover is the next 
to receive attention. It is very important to have 
it fit snug all around, with a big lap of at least two 
inches flat against the coaming. This is to pre¬ 
vent drifting snow from getting in and later melt¬ 
ing and wetting the bilge. Any small puddle be¬ 
tween the ribs will freeze and strain the ribs if 
allowed to remain there. If the boat has exten¬ 
sion trunk cabin, a cover will be needed, extending 
over cockpit and launch cabin if there is one 
astern of the extension cabin. In between the 
cockpit coaming and the sweep of the skin of the 
ship down to the level of the deck from the end 
of the extension cabin is a narrow strip of deck 
drained by scupper holes. In winter the snow 
fills this space, thaws and freezes again, and you 
have a permanent lump of ice in there which will 
strain and work all the surrounding woodwork 
all the rest of the season. The cover should pro¬ 
tect the boat from such small favors of old Boreas. 
A plain open motor boat requires a cover over the 
entire coaming, and there must be a ridge pole 
with at least three triangular frames holding the 
cover up. A few rough hemlock planks put on 


HAULING OUT 


327 


under the cover, not over it as is often done, are 
a great aid in keeping the slopes flat and true, so 
that they will not bag under the weight of snow. 
A ridge pole and at least one triangular frame 
will be wanted under the cover of the cockpit of 
a cabin sail or motor boat, for the same reason of 
preventing it bagging. As to material, good ten- 
ounce duck with ordinary weather shrinkage 
makes the best and most durable cover. Attempts 
to waterproof it with paraffin, etc., have usually 
proven a failure, as covers so treated soon rot 
and crack, especially in the creases. The reason 
is because there is always considerable residual 
acid in all oil and paraffin treating processes, 
which acid attacks the cotton of the canvas. It is 
the same acid which attacks the galvanizing of 
your gasoline tank. The cover should have a stout 
one-half-inch bolt rope on the ridge and around 
the edge, and have one-half-inch brass grommets 
which will snap down over corresponding buttons 
on the outside of the coaming. If it goes clear 
outside the skin of the ship it will have to be 
lashed with one-eighth-inch rope passing under 
the keel. 

If the cruiser has a signal mast and standing 
rigging, these should be unshipped and taken up 
to the house. A spruce mast will develop cracks 


328 


MOTOR BOATING 


during the winter and the galvanizing will all 
come off the wire rope. The masthole as well as 
anchor rope scuppers and ventilator cowl open¬ 
ings should be plugged up, either with the screw 
caps which come with them or with wooden caps 
puttied all around. 

It will not do to leave in the window, porthole 
and door curtains. All the brasswork of poles and 
rings will get tarnished and the sun will take all 
the color out of the curtains, so that they will all 
have to be made new next year. During the sum¬ 
mer, people were always around and handling 
them, so that they remained bright and clean, but 
the still, damp interior air of the boat in winter is 
fatal to such furnishings. 

Another thing: You expect probably to make a 
winter workshop of her interior, as there are al¬ 
ways a million things to be finished, altered or im¬ 
proved. Even during the summer most motor- 
boatists go down Sundays to ‘ ‘ work in the boat.’’ 
Sometimes they get under way before nightfall; 
smnetimes they don’t. But they are always en¬ 
joying themselves to the core, and the habit is 
sure to stick all through the winter. Wherefore 
you want everything that can be injured by saw¬ 
dust, shavings, varnish, emery, grease and paint- 


HAULING OUT 


329 


cans, safe and sound out of the boat and stowed 
away in the little old attic. 

Hauling out the boat for the winter usually 
means taking up the mooring also. The life of 
the mooring, especially the chain, depends entirely 
upon how long it remains in the water, and you 
ought to have at least a bowing acquaintance with 
the chain once a year. While it is impossible to 
sink any boat without first filling her with water, 
she is subject all the time to the danger of going 
ashore in a storm if one of your mooring-chain 
links parts anywhere. Getting the 200-pound 
mushroom or 300-pound scrap car wheel up out 
of the wet is some pulling. Don’t try it in a small 
boat. Better pay some oyster sloop to get it up 
for you with their windlass. Clean off all bar¬ 
nacles and seaweed from the mushroom and buoy, 
and give them a coat of paint at once. Clean the 
chain carefully, examining it for poor links, pickle 
in a pail of kerosene, rub it down in the sand, 
wash and paint all over with white lead tallow. 

After the cradle is out and blocked up securely 
for the winter, your boat will be held in just two 
places. This is a severe strain, for her whole 
weight is concentrated at those points and it will 
in time warp flats in her. The boat should be sup¬ 
ported practically along her entire keel, as even 


330 


MOTOR BOATING 


the latter will warp if it is a flat oak plank and 
only is touched by the supporting blocks at one or 
two places. As for the cradle blocks, these bear 
directly on one or two ribs only, and they will 
not long stay in shape. See that there is a block 
securely seated all along under her keel, one every 
four feet, and have flat wedged planks driven in 
between the blocks and the keel so as to take all 
the weight of the boat off the cradle blocks. The 
cradles then should have nothing to resist but 
whatever tendency to lean the hull may have, 
which will be a very light pressure. If the whole 
weight of the boat is carried all winter by only 
two blocks under the keel it will warp the stoutest 
oak, and it will never come out again after the 
boat is in commission, besides introducing a mean, 
leaky spot. 


CHAPTER X 


BUILDING A POWER CRUISER FROM KNOCKDOWN 
FRAMES 

With my chums, I planned this boat, in answer 
to an urgent need for a cool place to spend the 
summer within commuting distance of New York. 
What is more, we only started talking about the 
boat in February; we had her afloat by May 15, 
and lived aboard her from that time until Septem¬ 
ber. By way of summer accommodations, she pos¬ 
sessed a fine bathroom for’ard, a tiny galley in 
which breakfast and supper for four could be 
4 ‘shook up” with astonishing facility, a two-berth 
stateroom, and a large launch-cabin containing the 
engine under the central table and six large, real 
windows, that could be opened to the breeze, which 
made this cabin blowy, shady and glorious by day 
as well as cool by night. Two long lounging berths, 
or rather seats, went along each side of the launch- 
cabin, which would sleep two guests at a pinch, 
and were, in fact, the preferred positions on very 
hot nights, though the stateroom was seldom hot 

enough to make one want to change. For a cool, 
331 


332 


MOTOR BOATING 


breezy little summer hotel I have seldom seen the 
equal of that boat, and we built her at home for 
less than $700. 

To begin with the design. I saw nothing in the 
numerous knockdown frame catalogues that ex¬ 
actly suited our purpose. Most of them would do 
well for week-end cruises or sleeping accommoda¬ 
tions for a pair of youngsters with down-town- 
office jobs, but for us civilized comforts were 
a necessity, if an all-summer stay was to be en¬ 
joyed. A few years’ training in New York 
apartments had gotten us used to condensed com¬ 
forts, so to speak, so it was no great change to 
the still more compact accommodations of a small 
cruiser, provided she was completely found. Nor 
did the rather tubby lines of the average power 
cruiser appeal to me. I wanted something not 
over 7 feet 6 inches beam on 33 feet L. W. L., so 
that a 10-horse engine would “ snake” her along 
like a 13-inch shell when under way on a cruise. 

I found a model like that among the knockdown 
frames, and not in the alleged “cruiser” class, 
either, but among the meek and lowly open 
launches. The original was a fast open launch, 
with a number of records already behind her, and 
measuring 48 inches deep at the bow, 38 inches 
amidships and 42 inches astern. I proceeded to 



END OF FIRST DAY’S WORK ON THE “GO-SUM” 

The entire frame was set up and bolted together in one day by three men. 



FINISHING THE SKIN AND EXTENSION TRUNK PLANKING 

Calking the seams and smoothing with a round-faced plane was done here. 

Paying with paint and putty at the shipyard. 










































• 








































BUILDING A CRUISER 


333 


do things to her picture in the catalogue. I added 
on a foot of height to the bow, carried the raised 
cabin eave line aft to a point where the eye dic¬ 
tated that the pencil should stop, and swept a 
taffrail curve down from the cabin eave-lines about 
where I judged the stateroom should end. I then 
finished the rest of it in three little peek-a-boo 
launch-cabin windows, put in three portholes along 
the extension trunk, added a signal mast and a 
couple of flags, and the creation was ready for the 
inspection of an admiring public. 

Testing the drawing with an architect’s rule, I 
found that one’s naked eye is not such a bad ama¬ 
teur designer after all, particularly if it has been 
accustomed to look at 4 ‘sassy” yachts and classy 
canvas racing goods. The dimensions came out: 
Launch cabin, 7 feet 8 inches; stateroom (second 
two portholes), 6 feet 6 inches; cockpit, 6 feet; 
stern deck, 3 feet, leaving about 12 feet for galley, 
bathroom and chain locker. We couldn’t see that 
we needed over 3 feet of galley (and after events 
proved us right), but we did want plenty of room 
for the bathroom; so we gave it the remaining 
porthole and half the skyline and made it 4 feet 3 
inches long, leaving 5 feet for the anchor locker 
and bow timbers. As to height, your eye said that 
the boat would look landlubbery to a degree if she 


334 


MOTOR BOATING 


had a fraction more than 2 feet from the eave of 
the extension trunk cabin down to the fender- 
wale on the sheer strake, and that above this eave 
a crown of 6 inches could be put on the roof with¬ 
out said eye being off ended. You want 6 feet of 
headroom, including the carlines (if you can get 
it), and the keel, keelson and frame cross-timbers 
usually get away with about 6 inches; so, allow¬ 
ing an inch for flooring, you must provide for 6 
feet 6 inches from top of roof down to bottom of 
keel amidships. As the catalogue spoke of 38 
inches amidships, it was quite evident that I 
should have to go out and steal more than 3 feet 
somewhere. The crown and extension trunk 
would give me 2 feet 6 inches of it, and, as the 
boat would inevitably draw at least 3 inches more 
than her load water-line as an open launch, I be¬ 
thought me of the simple expedient of making her 
6 inches deeper, giving 3 of them to draft and 3 
to freeboard. 

So I ordered the frame sent, with ribs, stem and 
stern posts left 6 inches long, for which the com¬ 
pany charged me $3 extra. The entire frame cost 
$85.50, and the freight on it from Michigan to 
New York was $7.15. Soon after placing the or¬ 
der a roll of plank patterns and a book of direc¬ 
tions arrived from the frame company, and I 


BUILDING A CRUISER 


385 


spent over a week of evenings in cutting out the 
patterns. I might digress here and explain that 
this boat was financed entirely on hot air, as we 
figured that, by paying for everything as we went 
along, we would own the thing piecemeal before 
we knew it. And so it turned out; for, while we 
still owed money on the engine and a few lumber 
bills, she was practically all paid for when she 
was launched. 

About this time I ran into a beautiful lot of 
cypress, for which the owner was willing to trade 
cash to the extent of 7 cents a foot. It took forty 
dollars’ worth of it to plank the boat and raised 
extension cabin. I believe you can get good cy¬ 
press for less than this; but, as there wasn’t 
a single knot in the entire shipment, it got my 
goat and copped the above palatial price. Be that 
as it may, I now ran into a thirty-hour job, work¬ 
ing evenings, in transferring the plank patterns 
to the planks. I had them all sawed out to shape 
on a band-saw later in just one and one-half hours, 
the charge for the job being $1.15. Moral: Don’t 
think of sawing out these planks by hand your¬ 
self. No use trying to compete with a band-saw 
manned by two men and a small boy. It only 
makes you ridiculous, and makes your spare-time 
value look cheap. 


336 


MOTOR BOATING 


The frame arrived in three crates, and I set it 
up, with the help of two enthusiastic friends, in 
just one Sunday’s work. The illustration shows 
how it looked at the end of the day’s work. The 
frame company certainly made a beautiful job of 
the work. Every rib was beveled so that a rib¬ 
band would lie flat and fair anywhere along the 
body; the heavy framing around the skeg, shaft- 
log, stem and stern deadwoods, etc., had all been 
attended to, so that all you had to do was to bolt 
the big ship-splice together amidships in both 
keel and keelson, and bolt the stem timber to the 
keel below and the keelson above. We did all this 
work with plain %-inch galvanized iron rodding, 
peined over washers at either end of the bolt and 
burred down until the washers sank deep into the 
oak. My next move was to hire two ship carpen¬ 
ters to help me with the planks. I don’t think 
that an amateur can get on the garboard strake 
without making more or less of a botch of it— 
certainly not single-handed. But if one has been 
careful about setting up the main timbers so as 
to get them on exactly true, and sees to it that the 
rabbet meets the keel fore and aft in a fair curve, 
and is, furthermore, willing to cut and try pa¬ 
tiently with the garboard strake before nailing 
anything fast, there is no reason why a success- 
















BUILDING A CRUISER 


337 


ful job cannot be done. Most amateurs are in 
too much of a hurry. We were a whole day get¬ 
ting on the four planks of the port and starboard 
garboard strakes, and chalked it up as a good 
day’s work when the thing lay a good, fair calk¬ 
ing fit into the rabbets and keel. 

The rest of the planks went on easier—about 
three whole strakes on each side per day. We left 
off about the eleventh strake and went up to the 
sheer strake, as I had ordered the ribs 6 inches 
long, and would, therefore, have to fit at least one 
of the intervening strakes. As you are sure to 
gain or lose in putting on the planks, it is always 
a good plan to do the sheer strake before plank¬ 
ing all the way up, so that any discrepancies can 
be taken up between the two or three strakes left 
below the sheer. In planking, you need several 
C-clamps to hold the planks down on the ribs and 
at least one chain clamp to pull down snug upon 
the plank already nailed. You also need a breast 
drill, with machine twist drills, to drill through 
the cypress plank and the oak rib, three holes to 
each plank at each rib, into which are driven cop¬ 
per rivets or galvanized cut nails, whichever are 
preferred. These have then to be set and clinched 
inside, and about 2,000 of them will be needed in a 
boat of this size. It means quite a bunch of work, 


388 


MOTOR BOATING 


and if you can’t collect a few friends, handy with 
tools, to pitch in and help, you had better hire a 
couple of carpenters. 

Another long-winded job is calking the seams 
and puttying them with white-lead paste. There 
are about a thousand feet of seams, and it will take 
five bundles of calking cotton and a pail of white 
lead; also, about three days’ work for one man. 
There is nothing very hard about calking. Take 
care to bevel your planks so as to leave them open 
nearly a thirty-second of an inch on the skin side 
of the ship, give them a light coat of paint to 
make the cotton stick, and then feed it out of the 
roll, tacking it to the seam in little inch loops with 
the calking iron until you have about a yard of 
it up. Then go over the seam and drive in the 
cotton about % inch below the skin of the ship. 
The point is to keep the cotton coming even and 
not get it bunchy and hard in spots. When the 
planks swell the inner edges will crush, and she 
will bite the cotton hard all along the seam. After 
calking, run over the whole skin of the ship with 
a short jack-plane, getting a smooth, fair surface 
all over, and being careful not to leave any tool- 
marks, as they will show up later through any 
amount of paint and sandpapering. 

All the work on the sheer strake, which is of oak, 


BUILDING A CRUISER 


339 


must be countersunk and the holes plugged later 
with the little wooden plugs which you can buy at 
any ship chandler's. Inside of the ribs opposite 
the sheer strake runs the clamp, which is also of 
oak, with bolts passing clear through sheer strake, 
rib and clamp, being secured with a nut on the 
inside. Above the sheer strake is smooth sailing 
again, as two planks each will generally do for 
the sides of the extension trunk cabin. We spliced 
on oak extensions to every other rib, to make a 
frame for the cabin sides, and mortised the tops 
of them to receive the tenons of the roof carlines. 

The next step was to get on the cockpit coaming, 
and this I ran clear around to the stateroom, 
using it for the sill of the launch-cabin windows. 
The deck was a mere footboard, 7 inches wide, and 
I made the taffrail broad and flat, as, in getting 
up on deck for’ard, it would be much easier to 
run on it than on the narrow deck. We first got 
out the coaming blocks, and nailed them down on 
to the clamps; then we fitted the oak deck-planks 
along each side, and, finally, bent the coaming 
planks, screwing them to the ends of the coaming 
blocks with two No. 12 2-inch brass screws at 
each block. As all this work was countersunk and 
plugged, it took time. 

Then we set up the launch-cabin window mul- 


340 


MOTOR BOATING 


lions, and, as the coaming was nowhere perpen¬ 
dicular, each one had to be fitted so as to bring it 
true and plumb. Roof carlines joined each mul- 
lion; a sill was notched and bent to fit along the 
top of the coaming, and a broad stop put on each 
mullion outside, and the launch-cabin was ready 
for windows. All this work was in red oak, which 
stains with cherry japalac to give a very passable 
imitation of mahogany. After this I let the two 
carpenters go, paying them $50 each for about 
eleven days’ time, and felt that the money was 
well spent. There is an immense amount of de¬ 
tail work about a boat, and it uses up time to an 
unholy extent. If you elect to do it all yourself, 
well and good; any handy man with tools can 
make a job of it. But—better start your boat in 
November, if you want to get her over by June. 
I gained about two months on the job by hiring 
those men, and they worked with a finish and neat¬ 
ness that I couldn’t hope to equal. 

Left to myself, I put in a Sunday nailing on 
the roof ceiling, which was of %-inch yellow pine 
tongue-and-groove. It took about 100 board-feet, 
and the following evening we cut out and sewed 
the roof canvas, which was 10-ounce duck. I tacked 
it all around the edges of the cabin eaves, stretch¬ 
ing it taut and securing with 4-ounce copper tacks. 


BUILDING A CRUISER 


841 


To get these latter to start nicely without trying 
on their favorite trick of turning over in the can¬ 
vas, provide yourself with a small, sharp jab-awl 
and give the canvas a dig before inserting the tack 
point. A trim of heavy oak D/s-inch half-round 
beading was next put on all around the cabin 
eaves, joining the taffrail at the point where it 
slopes up to the eave line just aft of the state¬ 
room. The brads for this work must be galvan¬ 
ized, and should be sunk with a nail set, filled with 
wood filler and varnished immediately after put¬ 
ting on, or the weather will be sure to make rust 
stains on the oak. These can be, in part, removed 
with oxalic acid and sandpaper, but will never 
wholly disappear. To put on the tatfrail took con¬ 
siderable time and patience. It not only had to be 
sprung down to fit the sweep of the side of the 
ship up to the cabin eave, but had also to be curved 
edgewise to follow the lines of the boat. This lat¬ 
ter was not easy, as the taffrail was 2 y 2 inches 
across; but it finally came into place with strong 
clamps, and was secured by two brass screws 
sunk into each rib top and the sunk head covered 
with a %-inch oak plug. 

The first interior job was to locate the height 
of the cockpit floor. This should come at least 3 
inches above the waterline to make the cockpit 


342 


MOTOR BOATING 


self-bailing, and this latter is well worth while, 
since otherwise yon are in for a bailing job after 
every storm, and may get the carpets soaked and 
flooring warped in some nor faster, when it rains 
steadily for three or four days. Again, if yon do 
not get the cockpit floor too high, yon can dis¬ 
pense with the hatch over the cabin companion, 
always a source of weakness in the roof, and, 
withal, expensive. In the Go-Sum I located the 
cockpit timbers, so as to bring the floor 3 inches 
above the waterline, and laid down a floor of nar¬ 
row strips of %-inch cypress sawed up out of the 
waste from the boat planks. The ends of this 
floor rested on the main oak transom sill, which 
was made by spiking together three oak timbers 
sawed out of the waste of the sheer strakes, coam¬ 
ing and deck. The innermost and highest of these 
formed a stop to the door, and also gave some¬ 
thing to which the after-cabin panels could be 
nailed. The middle piece was the sill proper, and 
the outer piece formed the ledge on which to nail 
the ends of the cockpit flooring. It was so placed 
as to bring the sill 2 inches above the cockpit floor, 
not only to keep out water, but also to allow the 
doors to swing free above the cockpit floor. In 
getting out the panels for after-cabin, stateroom 
and galley partitions, I made up a design, as 


BUILDING A CRUISER 348 


shown, and sent it to a sash-and-door mill for a 
price in red oak. They returned a quotation of 
$32 for the set, but it seemed to be exorbitant (it 
really was very reasonable), so I ordered the lum¬ 
ber and set to work to make them myself. It was a 
long, exhausting job, and many of the fits were 
not as neat as I should have liked. All the frames 
were doweled together and the panels nailed to 
the back with brads. This brought two sunk 
panels looking into the stateroom and two raised 
panels with chamfered edges looking into the 
launch-cabin. They did not look at all badly, fin¬ 
ished in cherry japalac; but the mill job would 
have been all insert panels and strong, neat work, 
mortised and tenoned by machinery. Doing it 
again, I should certainly have the mill make them 
and simply fit the panels into the boat, as the 
lumber alone cost me about $19. However, after 
many long evenings of work, often not quitting 
until twelve or one o’clock, I got them all made 
and in. 

The next job was the berths. How to get com¬ 
fortable and cheap sleeping accommodations, good 
for all the year round, if need be, caused consid¬ 
erable cogitation and investigation. I loathed the 
regulation pipe-berth, and all forms of 4 ‘ daven¬ 
ports” and folding-bed schemes, sold or adver- 


344 


MOTOR BOATING 


tised, had the fatal defect of being square-cor¬ 
nered, while anything that goes in a boat will be 
lucky if it owns one single right angle in a/ny of 
its four corners. The easiest solution seemed to 
be a simple 3-inch by 4-inch yellow pine rail, 
doweled into the panels on both sides of the state¬ 
room and launch-cabin, inside of which could be 
stretched a suitable canvas bottom tacked to fram¬ 
ing strips nailed to the skin of the ship and to the 
panels fore and aft. Inspection and measure¬ 
ment of this scheme showed a width of 30 inches 
available at the after end of the stateroom and 22 
inches at for’ard end of same. The ordinary 
steamer berth is but 28 inches wide, and, in point 
of fact, it is quite wide enough for any one. In 
the launch-cabin there was 28 inches available 
for’ard, allowing a foot of gangway around the 
engine, and 24 inches aft—a little narrow, but not 
at all uncomfortable, as later events proved. So 
the stateroom berths were put in with 10-ounce 
duck and 20-ounce galvanized tacks. A trim of 
some of the left-over taffrail moulding was nailed 
on along the berth rail and a 30-inch mattress 
fitted in very nicely, thickening it up at the for’ard 
end, where one persuaded it into 22 inches of room 
with sundry vigorous punches in the side. These 
made very comfortable berths, and were made up 


BUILDING A CRUISER 


345 


like a bed at home, with sheets, blankets and white 
bed-spreads and pillows. A 7-foot runner rug in 
the stateroom, extending out into the launch-cabin 
as far as the engine, made a cosy room of it, with 
the help of four green silk porthole curtains on 
brass rods and a set of brass-handled drawers un¬ 
der each berth. These drawers were 18 inches 
wide and 15 inches deep, four to each berth, and 
held all one’s wardrobe. 

The launch-cabin cushions were bought after no 
little examination of available styles. They were 
7 feet 6 inches long by 28 inches wide, and cost 
$4 each in plain green denim, with the usual but¬ 
ton upholstery, or $7 each in green velveteen. We 
chose the former, as it could come to no possible 
harm by getting wet; for I foresaw the times 
when that boat would be left in the offing with her 
cabin windows open, the crew ashore, and a thun¬ 
der-squall coming up to soak everything. 

For the launch-cabin floor we chose a hard green 
buckram and hemmed it with green tape, as we 
expected to take it up frequently and wash it 
clean of engine grease, mud, water-stains, etc., 
and subsequent experience proved it a good idea. 
We finished the interior of the launch-cabin in 
cherry japalac and varnish, with an oak cove 
beading trim let in around all panels and in the 






346 


MOTOR BOATING 


doors under the launch-cabin berths. Two brass 
yacht lamps in swinging gimbals, with smoke bells 
overhead, went on the two for’ard panels of the 
launch-cabin, and the ship’s clock and compass- 
box went on the after-panels. A tiny glass pane 
let into the port after-panel allowed one to see 
the compass inside, either by day or night. It 
beat the small binnacle scheme out of sight. 

As I stated somewhere earlier in this chapter, 
we did not see that over 3 feet of length of the boat 
needed to be devoted to the galley. "We paneled 
in all one side of this space from the stateroom 
to the bathroom partitions, to form a large, full- 
length clothes locker on the port side of the gal¬ 
ley. It contained a dozen clothes hooks, which 
would hold oil-skins and overcoats, to say noth¬ 
ing of such long duffle as brooms, guns, fish-poles 
and fog horns. The starboard side was the gal¬ 
ley proper. At a height of 32 inches I put a hori¬ 
zontal length of %-inch by 6-inch oak on edge 
and paneled in below it to make a cupboard for 
staple groceries. Between this board and the skin 
of the ship went a small iron sink with a rubber 
stopper, costing $2.10, and a small baby refrigera¬ 
tor, painted to imitate oak, and costing $2.75. It 
was 16 inches long by 12 high and 12 deep, and 
held a 5-cent cake of ice in one end in a tank that 


BUILDING A CRUISER 


347 


connected with a little nickel-plated faucet. There 
was also a movable shelf in the outer compart¬ 
ment, and the amount of meat, eggs, butter and 
general perishables that little refrigerator would 
hold was astonishing. All the ship ’s tea cups hung 
from hooks on the carlines of the roof, and the 
plates went in racks behind the ice box. Frying- 
pans, pots, skillets, etc., went on hooks fore and 
aft in the galley. We had the finest breakfasts 
and suppers ever eaten, from that little galley. 

The bathroom was finished in white enamel 
throughout, with a gorgeous display of nickel- 
plated bathroom fittings. It was always breezy 
and glorious in the early mornings, as we had 
generously given it two portholes and the for’ard 
skylight hatch in its 4 feet 3 inches of length. Its 
door had a remarkable invention, which consisted 
of a pier-glass mirror looking into the galley. One 
could thus dress in the stateroom not 3 feet away 
from this mirror and observe the habiliments of 
fashion and the mold of form to one’s heart’s 
content. In the bathroom went the smallest 
enamel corner basin manufactured. It is 13 inches 
on a side, has a single nickel faucet connecting 
to the fresh-water tank, and cost $7. The toilet, 
of standard yacht pump type with oak seat, cost 
$30 complete, installed by a yacht plumber. 


348 


MOTOR BOATING 


This completed the interior furnishings of Go- 
Sum. Her portholes were plain brass, 5 inches, 
costing $2 apiece. I put on a 4-inch by 17-foot 
signal mast, both for looks and for the sake of 
having a spar to bend a sail to in an emergency. 
I also made an awning rail of %-inch galvanized 
iron pipe running on 16-inch stanchions a foot 
inside the eaves of the extension trunk cabin. A 
stout spar from the mast each way to the ends of 
this rail gave a ridge over which the awning could 
be drawn taut by lashings through grommets on 
the hem and passing around the awning rail. It 
kept both stateroom and launch-cabin cool on the 
warmest days, as it kept off the sun and gave a 
foot of shade between the deck and the awning. 

The engine was an 11-horsepower, 4% inches 
x 4^ inches 800 R. P. M., Ferro 2 cycle, and 
it gave her about 9 knots speed. She went from 
Sailor’s Snug Harbor, Staten Island, to the yacht 
anchorage off West Ninety-fourth Street, New 
York, in 1 % hours’ actual timing. It was a mighty 
nice engine, with an exceedingly fool-proof oil 
system, and it took Go-Sum up to Albany and 
back and out to Boston by the outside route with¬ 
out any trouble, to say nothing of the innumer¬ 
able cruises around New York waters. 

Over the engine went the oak living room and 



BUILDING A CRUISER 


349 


dining table of the yacht. It had y 2 -m ch round 
iron legs that went down 4 inches into holes in the 
oak engine-bed timbers, so that the table could 
be picked off in case it was necessary to get at 
the engine and take her apart (which I have never 
had to do yet, glory be!). Under the table I 
screwed the ignition equipment complete, batteries 
and spark coils—a handy place. I only used one 
engine control—that of the carburetor. A handle 
for it ran along under the table and came out at 
the after-end, where it was within easy reach from 
the cockpit. The timer handle you adjust when 
first getting under way. The fewer mechanical 
links you have about a boat the more fun you will 
have, and the less things will go wrong. 

As to fittings, nothing but polished brass run¬ 
ning lights, whistle-pump, steering wheel, fog bell, 
flag sockets and chocks would do for us. I won’t 
say how much time we put in throughout the sum¬ 
mer in polishing these infernal things, but will 
say that we bought the whole outfit at a motor- 
boat supply house for less than $30. At the end 
of the season the only things left that could in 
any way be called polished were the running 
lights. 

This about winds up the yarn of the Go-Sum’s 
building, except the painting and launching. As 


350 


MOTOR BOATING 


to the former, it took a tub of white lead and two 
cans of 1 ‘ yacht white,” which is a quick-drying 
dead white paint, very like copper bottom paint in 
its action. Stir and thicken in another can as 
you use it, to get the best results. To get the boat 
from the back yard down to the shore cost $12 for 
the hire of a truck and riggers, and they ran her 
into the briny on rollers under the same cradle 
that I built under her after the planking was all 
done, calking in and seams puttied. If any crowd 
of young fellows wants a “double-X” little sum¬ 
mer resort to solve the eternal summer problem, 
just build a Go-Sum . If you start in February 
or March, hire carpenters for the heaviest work 
and do all the rest of the interior and outside work 
yourselves. Working evenings and Sundays, 
you’ll have her overboard by June 1, and you’ll 
then have all summer to enjoy her in. 

Detailed List of Construction Expenses of “Go-Sum” 


Frame. 

$85.00 

Launch cabin cush¬ 


Planks. 

51.00 

ions . 

$8.00 

Interior woodwork.. . 

35.00 

Running lights, pol¬ 

Paint. 

8.00 

ished brass. 

12.00 

Gasoline tank (60 


Brass gear chocks, etc. 

14.00 

gals.) . 

14.00 

Life preservers. 

3.00 

Yacht toilet. 

30.00 

Anchor and rope. 

6.00 

Basin and sink. 

7.00 

Awning and rail. 

6.00 

Ice box. 

3.00 

Signal mast. 

8.00 

Portholes. 

12.00 

Rudder, ^g-in. boiler 


Mattresses. 

9.00 

plate .. 

4,00 



















BUILDING A CRUISER 


351 


Dinghy . $5.00 

L. C. curtains, etc.. 4.00 

L. C. windows. 7.00 

Skylight. 3.00 

Eight stateroom 

drawers . 4.00 

Miscellaneous brass 

hardware. 6.00 

Miscellaneous galvan¬ 
ized hardware. 11.00 

Stateroom carpets.... 7.00 

Galley stove. 2.00 


Galley floor and locker $3.00 

L. C. lamps. 4.00 

Bilge pump and boat¬ 
hook . 5.00 

11-H. P. engine com¬ 
plete with screw, 

shaft, etc. 207.00 

Paid carpenter labor 
and construction 
hardware.124.00 


Total cost.$707.00 


THE END 




















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